


Original Sin

by ParadiseAvenger



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: F/M, Love Triangles, Love/Hate, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-06-10
Packaged: 2017-12-14 09:03:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 30,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/835117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadiseAvenger/pseuds/ParadiseAvenger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The priest hears the confession of a woman condemned. And her crime? She took his heart, his EVERYTHING, and then, she ran away. "This is not a love story, but it is a story about love..." Based on the movie, Original Sin. RikuXKairi. SoraXKairi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Original Sin

Please, check out my first ORIGINAL NOVEL! **The Breaking of Poisonwood by Paradise Avenger.** (Summary: People were dead. When Skye Davis bought me at a slave auction as a birthday present for his brother, I had no idea what my new life was going to be like, but I had never expected this. It all started when Venus de Luna was killed and I was to take her place, to become the new savior… Then, bad things happened and some people died. In the heart of the earth, we discovered the ancient being that Frank Davis had found and created and used to his advantage. The Poisonwood—)

I’ve always wanted to do a Kingdom Hearts story for the movie Original Sin because it’s just perfect and I think of it every time I watch it. And now I am, so hah!

X X X

Chapter One: Original Sin

_“You cannot walk away from love.” That was the advertisement in the Baltimore newspaper. And that is how he found her. She was a young woman in need of a husband and he was a man who wanted a wife. It would have been nice for it to be that simple, but it’s never that way… is it?_

…

The Spanish villa was beautiful. It was all pearl-white stone, white stucco, wide terraces with ornate wrought iron banisters and garden gates also white. All the hallways were open to the mild summer air, but then it was always warm in Santiago, Cuba. Bright green ivy crawled all over the walls like a curious child, potted palms swayed in the crisp early morning breeze, the perfume of nearby flowers graced the air, and there was a distant chirrup of crickets in the darkness that was pierced only by pale lantern light. 

Three long purple-black shadows skipped across the beautifully tiled floors, racing up the walls like phantoms. Then, the trio turned the corner sharply onto the open veranda passage—two ahead, one dragging behind. Flanking the beautiful villa’s young master was the lovely Spanish servant, Chloe Mavarachi, and the young master’s father, Leopold Skye, was lagging.

“There’s no use trying to talk any sense into him now. He’s completely loco!” Chloe said flatly and swished along in her full white linen skirts, keeping up with young Sora Skye where his father could not. She was used to these antics from the young man and was in good shape.

Huffing and puffing along behind the servant-girl and his son, Leopold panted out, “You can’t marry her, Sora. You’ve never even met her!” Leopold, on the other hand, was getting old and still thought of his son as the quiet child who did as he was told.

But, like Chloe said, Sora was out of his mind.

“Exactly, Father, but I am meeting her today. The boat from America comes at six this morning. We marry at nine and, by ten, I am back at work,” Sora Skye said patiently. He had explained this to Chloe already while she was trying to talk him out of this. He had an entire speech prepared for the next person who tried to talk him down just so he could get through it faster.

“Preposterous!” Leopold said and finally pulled up abreast of his quick-walking son. (He had only caught up because Sora had stopped and turned to Chloe so she could help him straighten himself out. It was five in the morning and everyone needed a little buffing up and smoothing out that early in the day.) “This is ridiculous!”

Obediently, Chloe adjusted the lapels of Sora’s white suit coat and tightened his too-loose tie just a hair even though she rather felt like strangling him.

“A man needs a wife,” Sora said flatly to his father as Chloe finished and gave him a pat. “Isn’t that what you have been telling me?” He slowed his pace so his father could keep up with him. “Well, I sent for one.”

“From America,” Chloe supplied helpfully.

Sora slid her a look and kept walking. 

“Well, what does she look like?” Leopold asked Chloe. Leopold was all about a woman’s looks—her body, her face, her breasts, everything. He was even that way about his servants.

For a moment, the two stayed behind him, looking at the bride’s photograph and then his father made an impolite sound deep in his throat. Chloe’s footsteps tapped on the tile as she approached Sora and Leopold began to huff after them again.

“There comes a time in every man’s life when the band is playing and he’s the only one who can’t hear it,” Chloe said as she caught up briskly with Sora. It was some of her wisdom that Sora was beginning to think she carried in a secret bucket and dumped out on him every time he did something out of the ordinary—like send away for a mail-order bride and from America no less. “Today is your day,” she said and handed him the photo of his bride that she had stored somewhere on her person.

Leopold snatched the picture from between them, but Sora ignored that. Instead, he said to Chloe, “I love you, woman,” and gave her a loud kiss on the cheek.

She laughed, a beautiful heartfelt sound that no one ever tired of hearing. The day Chloe stopped laughing would be an unfortunate day indeed.

“This bride! She is not beautiful!” Leopold said and waved the photograph in his son’s face.

Sora did admit, in secret to himself, that he had picked a rather… handsome woman indeed. She had a stern sharp face and was dressed frumpily in a floral dress, but she was what he needed in his life right now. So, to his father, he explained, “She is not meant to be beautiful. She is meant to be kind and true and young enough to bear children.” Then, he plucked the picture from his father’s fingers before he could make another comment.

Chloe chuckled and separated father and son before anything could spring up to spoil the wedding. Leopold huffed and puffed down the stairs after them, into the courtyard where a carriage drawn by two white horses was waiting patiently.

Sora was already climbing into the carriage and she closed the door behind him, peering in through the window at his pale face. “The sun will be up soon and that boat is coming in,” she said to him, as if he didn’t know.

Leopold made it to the other carriage window, which Chloe hadn’t been able to block fast enough. “What about love, Sora?” he panted. “Does love come into this equation at all?” Damn childhood. Sora had gone on and on about marrying for love as a child and it seemed Leopold hadn’t forgotten. He was playing that card as a last ditch effort to stop his son’s marriage to a strange foreign woman.

“Love is not for me, Father,” Sora said, leaning out the window. “Love is for people who believe in it.” And why should Sora believe in love? His father only cared for beauty and his mother had only loved her own beauty, never her husband and never her son. Maybe that was why Sora had chosen a not-beautiful bride, because beauty was only something that brought up bad memories of his strained and fanciful childhood.

Chloe laughed.

Leopold huffed and Sora patted his father’s hand.

Chloe was still laughing in the background as Sora spoke to the carriage driver, telling him to go, and he craned his head out the window again to look back at her. “Why are you laughing at me? You’ve been laughing at me the whole morning!” he called as the carriage pulled away.

“Oh never mind! You go! Go on!” Chloe said and waved. Leopold was still frowning and huffing from the exorcise he had gotten this morning. His lighter flared in the darkness and he lit up a cigar, casting the warm light across Chloe’s caramel-colored face.

…

The docks were business as usual—a lot of commotion and aboriginal singing, some shouting and fighting and even a little brawling, fish tossing and ware shouting, boats coming and going, a few people falling in or fishing, and a lot of swearing (these were sailors after all). The docks were the culture and activity of the world. Everything came together with the brine of the green-glass sea and the cool wet breeze. If it didn’t come in by the ocean, it didn’t exist in the world, but life was that way when you lived on an island.

The massive ocean liner was anchored out in the deep briny bay and all the little dinghies were being rowed in from the ship to the docks in a never-ending stream, letting off passengers and cargo and exotic animals and the like. All kind of things came in on a ship like that, including Sora Skye’s future wife.

Sora meandered the docks, inspecting passing faces for the handsome woman who matched his photograph. On the edge of the horizon, the sun was just cresting over the water and he had never seen such a beautiful sight.

_“No, this is not a love story, but it is a story about love and the power it has over a life. The power to heal or destroy. And this is where the story begins…”_

The sun was full over the horizon now, the sea had turned from dull green to deep blue, and the great liner was empty of passengers and cargo and sailors alike. It would make port here, in Santiago, tonight and be on its way in the morning. Sora had wandered the entire area, but had been unable to find his bride. Where could she be? He stood on the bluffs, on the high marble wall there, and looked down, but even from that vantage point he could see nothing but the endless sea.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	2. Wedding "Deception"

I’m so pleased to see that everyone missed me! I feel so special! I’m on my way to go live in Arizona, from Pennsylvania, with a dog, cat, and lizard. I didn’t drag ass updating of my own free will. I had no internet so I just couldn’t. That’s why I put everything on hold and let you all know. I knew it would be a while! Everyone missed me!!! Happy, happy.

X X X

Chapter Two: Wedding “Deception”

Sora was studying the black and white photograph of the handsome woman in its gold-gilded frame. She reminded him of a pretty shiny black crow in a lovely little cage—the cage prettier than what it held trapped inside it. Maybe somehow he had missed his bride in the hustle and bustle of the crowd at the docks, but no… she had such a flat severe face and an ugly frumpy style of obvious dress that he was certain he would have spotted her, but…

Where was she?

A single woman approached him, rather boldly, stopping a mere foot away from his bent knees and dusty shoes. She was wearing thick leather boots and heavy skirt of beige canvas and, at her side, she carried a small bamboo birdcage with a single yellow finch inside it. Here, the bird was much prettier and more interesting than the cage that held it. The bird twittered cheerily, watching Sora through the bars of its little jungle cage.

“Mr. Skye?” she said with great conviction so that it was hardly a question any longer. “Sora Skye?”

“Yes?” he said and lifted his head to look into her face. She carried a large black umbrella and wore a wide-brimmed hat, but he couldn’t tell any more about her than that. She was standing directly in the glare of the sun and he was blinded by the light and her face was nothing but black shadow.

“You don’t recognize me, do you?” she said in that same tone that made it not a question.

Confused, Sora spoke the only name this strange woman could possibly be. “Miss Locke?” He stood up from where he had been seated at the top of the bluffs, looking down over the harbor and wondering about his bride. This movement forced the strange woman to shuffle aside and out of the glare of the sun. “Kairi Locke?”

Finally, her face came out of shadow, but she was not the handsome woman in his photograph.

She was lovely, breath-taking, stunning… beautiful! She had a heart-shaped face framed by sheets of ruby-red tresses that had been tousled and curled by the sea breeze. In her lobes she wore delicate sapphire earrings and a matching choker around her slender swan-like throat. Her body was also lithe and graceful with fragile wrists and long fingers, full breasts that pressed against her bodice, and a narrow waist that flared out into perfect hips. Her legs were long and must have been slender though it was hard to tell beneath such heavy traveling skirts and thick boots. But more striking than all of those features were her eyes—they were large and strange and the deepest purest blue-violent he had ever seen. Actually, he had never even seen eyes like hers.

Leopold would be pleased.

Stunned, Sora began in a confused croak, “This picture…”

“I’ve deceived you,” she said quickly, very honestly and straight-forward. She didn’t even lower those startling beautiful eyes of hers. “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have, but I was unsure… You see, I didn’t want a man to be interested in me just because I owned a pretty face. So I sent another woman’s photograph and not my own.”

Sora had only been half-listening, busy looking at her beautiful luscious mouth. She had such soft full pink lips that he was suddenly dying to kiss her and he had never felt a desire like that before. Since she was staring at him expectantly, he nodded and forced out, “I see.”

“I do hope you’ll forgive me. I did hope to write—I tried many times, but my courage failed me. I’m sorry.”

Sora lifted his eyes to her face and stared into those eyes of hers. She stared back, pretty mouth curving into an even more beautiful smile.

“And, umm, well, now I stand before you as I am, and you know the worst about me,” she said and set down her birdcage with a small soft sound. The bird stopped singing and they both seemed to be waiting for something.

Did she expect him to hit her? What kind of barbarous things went on in America?

“No, no!” Sora said quickly. “Not the worst at all, only,” he hesitated, “not what I was expecting.”

She lowered her beautiful eyes and adjusted her grip on the wooden handle of her umbrella. “If my deception has altered your intentions and if you are not satisfied in any way…”

“No, no, no,” Sora said again. “It is not that.”

“I am determined to make my way back to my home in Delaware. If you say so, I will,” she said earnestly. 

But what man could be upset to suddenly find that the bride he thought to be only handsome was suddenly a great beauty? Sora didn’t know about those Americans, but he knew that he was the farthest thing from upset. He would never have sent her home now, not after seeing her.

“No, no. Miss Locke… Miss Locke,” he said and sucked in a sudden breath. The sea air was stealing away at his mind and her beauty was scorching his flesh. “You are being honest with me so I will be honest with you, too. I will admit to a deception of my own.”

She glanced up at him sharply, eyes wide, and then she smiled. Her teeth were perfect, white and straight. “You,” she said, “are exactly the image of your photograph.”

Sora chuckled lightly. “Yes, yes, I am. But I wrote to you that I am a clerk in a coffee export house and I am not. I own half of the house. The business is my own.”

She hummed in her chest and twirled her umbrella in her long graceful fingers. “And you did not wish for a woman to be interested in you just because you owned a pretty bank account,” she said insightfully. 

Sora nodded, feeling strange. Maybe it was just a combination of this woman’s beauty and the sea and getting up so early.

“Well, then we have something in common,” she said coolly and gazed at him.

He tilted his had questioningly.

“We are both not to be trusted,” and again she spoke with such conviction that Sora wondered exactly what kind of woman she was.

He chuckled again, feeling like Chloe for laughing so much. “If my deception has altered your intentions,” he repeated from her.

She smiled, clearly remembering her own words.

“If you are not interested in marrying a wealthy man…”

“No,” she said. “I think I can manage.” She laughed then as well, and it was a beautiful sound, even more beautiful than Chloe’s laughter. “If you could manage a somewhat prettier wife,” she said finally and looked into his eyes with those indigo orbs.

“I’ll make the effort,” Sora said.

At her feet, the bird began to chirrup and sing again. They laughed, watching each other, as if to find it strange for two strangers to be so completely honest with each other and so fast, too. And it was strange, but Sora didn’t care. She had put her fingers to her mouth in almost a nervous way now, pressing at her full lush lips with those slender tapered fingers. The sight was alluring and Sora forced his eyes away—to the sea and the whirling gulls and the distant speck of ships on the horizon. Then, since his mother raised a gentleman, he bent to lift her light bamboo birdcage with the single golden finch and offered her his arm.

She took it and murmured, “So, now we have all the time in the world to get to know each other.”

“Umm, no, not all the time,” Sora told her slowly.

“Oh?”

“Yes, we are going to be married at nine o’clock.”

If she was surprised or startled, she didn’t show it. “Well, then we’d better hurry.”

And since it was nearly eight-thirty, Sora said, “Yes. We’d better.”

…

The church was glorious. Like Sora’s villa, though he would have it no other way, it was cloud-white. Inside, the walls were covered in spectacular golden carvings, portraits of saints in gilded frames watched over the ceremony along with statues with eerie white eyes, all framed by a halo of gold. The atmosphere was smoky with incense and candle smoke, but the pews were mostly empty—only close friends and family of Sora Skye in attendance since his bride came from across the far seas. Behind Kairi was Chloe as her bridesmaid and Leopold stood just behind Sora as the best man. (Leopold had been most happy to discover that Kairi was not handsome, as expected, but beautiful.)

She was standing before him, draped in the traditional white gown and heavy shawl and thick embroidered veil that Chloe had spent hours on, and a long strand of pearls and gold twined them together in the literally sense while the marriage took care of the rest. Sora felt slightly giddy at her beauty coupled with the beauty of everything around them. It was almost like a dream.

“Recibe este anillo,” the priest said in thick Spanish. He was bowed and stooped, but very formal and just what Sora had wanted for his bride—a traditional Spanish wedding so she could taste his culture.

“Take this ring,” Sora repeated.

“En señal de mi amor…”

“As a sign of my love…”

“Y de la fidelidad…”

“And fidelity…”

“A ti…”

“To you,” Sora finished and slid the ring over her pale slender finger. He could see her face through her thick white veil but her hands were chilly and he thought she was trembling slightly. But then she lifted her hand to her beautiful mouth and kissed the ring deeply and he figured that he must have imagined it all. 

Then, it was time for the reception.

Everyone was cheerful, having gotten over the fact that Sora had ordered a bride from far away and Kairi seemed content even among all these happy drunken strangers. Chloe bustled about, watching over everyone and tending as all his servants did but she was more a part of the party. Leopold was well into a drunken stupor by now, calling for music even though the band was immersed in playing. People were dancing, the air was sweetened with flowers and champagne, and there was love in the air.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Leopold called and lifted his glass. “A toast to the groom and his beautiful bride!”

Then, Chloe came in and swept him away before he started a rant about beauty.

Sora sent her a grateful look and then returned his gaze to his lovely Kairi. She had shed much of the traditional gown and all its layers. Now, she was wearing a beautiful gown of palest lavender that made her creamy skin glow with a light embroidered shawl down around her elbows. The bodice of the dress hugged her breasts and the curve of her ribs and left her beautiful throat and shoulders bare save small gauzy sleeves. She was such a beauty with her ruby-red tresses all curled and pulled back from her face though still free to tumble down her back, flowers in her hair. And her eyes… they positively glowed with light.

“Will you dance with me?” she asked once they were finished having their photographs taken.

“Dance?” he repeated.

She nodded.

“I don’t dance,” he protested.

She smiled fondly. “I say you do.”

And who was he to deny her this one thing that she wanted? Especially since she had done for him everything he wanted.

“May their life together be like this dance, harmonious and smooth,” Leopold was saying, still toasting though no one save Chloe was listening anymore. “Dance for life never-ending and—”

“Enough is enough,” Chloe said finally and put her hand on his shoulder.

“I’m almost through,” he protested, waving her off.

“You’re through now,” she continued. “Sit down.”

And so, Sora and Kairi danced together. They looked beautiful together, the picture-perfect couple. Kairi was a vision, beautiful and foreign, a once-and-forever bloom. Sora was smoky and lit up with native Spanish culture, gleaming like something highly polished. Even though he was a little less light on his feet than she was, it was hard to tell. They looked that good together. And everyone applauded for no one, no one, had ever gotten Sora to dance before.

…

They returned to Sora’s villa a little after midnight with only Chloe beside them. The other well-wishers, including Leopold, had been sent home or were spending the night at the hotel. So, the twin white horses brought the carriage home to the beautiful cloud-white house flanked by traditional flame-bearing men racing behind them.

There was a path of candles leading up the steps to the bedroom and Sora sensed Chloe’s influence though she scampered away before he could catch her. Beside him on the seat, his bride only gazed at the wonderful house and Sora saw the awe in her eyes and mouth. Together, they walked up the stairs and Kairi kept her hands folded in front of her so Sora did not reach to touch her. At the top, she stopped and gazed around admiringly again.

“Would you like to see the house?” he offered.

“Oh, no. I can see it tomorrow,” she said sweetly.

“Yes,” Sora breathed. He loved his house and he loved to show it off.

Across from him, Kairi lowered her eyes from the ceiling and gazed at the ground between them. She let out an unsteady breath, twisted a lock of hair around her pretty finger, and whispered, “Please, give me a moment. I am shy of these things…”

Sora met her eyes and saw true fear in them. He murmured gently, “I will give you as many moments, days, nights, as you need.”

She looked shocked by this. Her beautiful eyes widened and her hands squeezed together tightly.

“When you want me to come to you, I will,” he continued softly. “Not before.”

She took a deep breath, the swell of her breasts heaving over the bodice of her wedding gown. “You would do that for me?” she asked.

He smiled at her. “Yes.”

She smiled at him again, gratefully, and her eyes were so beautiful. “Well then, I will say goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” he said in returned and le her around the corner, gesturing down the hall. “The room is there, to the right.”

“I think I’ll find it,” she said quickly as if regardless of what he had said he might jump on her if he got her between himself and the bed. Then, a vision in her pale rosy lilac gown, she floated down the hallway to her new bedroom and her new life.

Sora watched her from the stairway until she the door closed softly behind her. Only then did he go to his own bedroom.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	3. Falling in Love

X X X

Chapter Three: Falling in Love

The disk of buttery pre-dawn sunlight lifted over the great Cuban jungle. It was a hazy sort of purple-orange morning with the air sweetened by honeysuckle and the banana palms swaying in the breeze. Distant wildlife sang in a chorus. It was going to be a perfect beautiful day.

Sora Skye’s villa was nestled between the twin bosoms of the mountains behind and a lovely pond before. Chloe was bustling about, opening up the cloud-colored manor, while other servants tended the white horses that Sora owned. Then, as tradition in celebration of a new bride and a new life, the entire beautiful house was scrubbed from top to bottom until it shone and gleamed. Even the servants bathed and scrubbed along with the white horses.

Though Sora was content to sleep through all of this.

He finally woke, groaning and stretching loudly without getting out of his cloud-like canopy bed all draped with thin white gauze. He had slept alone, giving his new bride all the time she wanted before she gave herself to him. He was not a barbarian.

“Ah, awake at last.” Kairi’s voice rang through the chambers and she swept into his room in a lovely white robe. “The day is half-gone,” she told him.

Sora was busy watching her closely, her every move, as she poured out a cup of coffee in his favorite cup with her delicate wrists and fingers. He was so busy watching, that he didn’t realize he was supposed to be speaking until she looked at him with those big blue eyes of hers.

“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly. “I am not dressed.” (But he was in plain cotton pants and an open shirt over his shoulder. Even so, he saw her eyes drawn to his bared flesh.)

“I could wait outside, but then the coffee would be cold,” she said coolly and swept back the curtains to hand him a cup. 

“No, it’s alright.” Sora was not ashamed of his body in the least. He knew he was an attractive man and her gaze only served to prove him right. 

Kairi swept back to the tray, set with fruit courtesy of Chloe, and poured herself a mug of strong black coffee like she had for him. “If someone would bring me my coffee each day before I dressed, I would be very happy,” she said softly. “It would change the day.”

Sora lowered his cup from his lips. “But,” he began, “you only drink tea in the morning.”

She sat down beside him on the bed, giving him the back of her shoulder as if frightened. “I do?” she asked. “No.”

“Yes,” Sora insisted because he knew he was not wrong or confused. “When I said to you in my letters that I worked in a coffee company, you wrote back—”

“That was my sister,” she interrupted.

Sora stared at her, his own blue eyes wide and curious. His coffee lay forgotten in his hand, but Kairi had not forgotten hers. She took a long drink before speaking again.

“She believes coffee to be a sinful pleasure so I pretended to agree with her. As she read all my letters to you, I could not always be entirely truthful,” she explained and took another drink. Her eyelids fluttered closed and she drank as if the coffee was indeed a sinful pleasure.

“All the better to forget them,” Sora said and set his cup aside. “That is all behind you now.”

She was quiet a moment and then she asked him suddenly, “What do you think?”

“About what?”

“Do you believe as my sister does that pleasure could ever be sinful?” she asked him and reached out her slender beautiful hand to touch his bent knee. 

Her touch was feather light and soft, wrapped in the petal-like tendrils of her white robe to reveal only a glimpse of her slender pale wrist. It was a sexy thing, but he sensed that she wasn’t doing it on purpose. And so, before her hand could wander to his hardening organ, he took her hand gently in his own and kissed the back of it. She made a soft sound, almost a moan, and his lips wandered down to that sexy expanse of wrist. Then, before he could get carried away, he removed his mouth from her and smile. 

She met his gaze, but didn’t quite smile back.

…

When Sora finished dressing and came downstairs, he found Kairi sitting at the piano with both her beautiful pale hands laid out like trinkets on the ivory keys. She was singing sweetly, softly, and plying without the aid of a music sheet. She looked so very beautiful, like a porcelain sculpture and he stood at the top of the stairs, just watching her for the longest time. What a beautiful woman… she had been far more than he had expected.

…

After that, he suggested a tour of the grounds around his beautiful villa and Kairi agreed. Sitting sidesaddle, her skirts like a half-opened flower swept over her legs, she was just as beautiful, if not more, out in the golden sunlight than she had been sitting at the candlelit piano. They rode deep into the fields of coffee.

“So these are all coffee plants?” she asked curiously. “Which ones?”

And so Sora showed her how to pick the coffee beans, wrapped in their bitter red fruit and looking rather not like beans at all. She tasted one, bit boldly right into it, mouth puckering and eyes crinkling, and Sora just had to laugh. She smiled, lips stained bright red from the juices, and she was even more beautiful then. 

“These are ripe,” he explained and plucked out a bright red berry. 

He showed her how to open then to get to the dark bean inside and she was eager to try herself, but there was a certain knack to it and the bean launched from its pod and into the bodice of her dress. It fell down between her breasts and she quickly clasped her hands to her bosom, hiding the path, but Sora chuckled. She pressed her fingers shyly to her mouth and laughed a little as well.

Together, they wandered through the fields, the horses munching along behind at the leaves on the coffee plants. They milled between the many workers out picking the beans in a expert way so that none landed between breasts. It was very beautiful, but very strange, Sora supposed, because Kairi’s eyes held a constant mix of curiosity and awe. Surely she had never seen a life like his before and now it was her life too.

“Why did you chose an American wife?” she asked suddenly.

“Well,” he began and paused to think a moment. Why had he? He had always been fascinated by the thought of America, Land of the Free and Home of the Brave or so all the songs and propaganda said. “Here,” he decided, “We are the past and, there, you are the future.”

She looked into his eyes and he saw himself reflected in hers.

“Why did you choose to leave it?” he asked.

She lowered her gaze. “To escape the future,” she said finally. “Or to become someone else I think.” She looked up into his face then and he sensed that she wasn’t being completely honest with hi, but that didn’t matter. They all had a few skeletons in their closets and he was no exception.

“I am someone else when I am with you,” Sora said. “Someone more like myself.”

She stared into his eyes and Sora felt drawn as if by a string that was stretched out between them. She tipped her head away as if afraid and Sora stopped where he was. This seemed a comfort to her because she smiled and looked back into his face. She wet her lips and then Sora was mere inches away. This time, she did not shy though Sora would have waited again. She let him kiss her and it was everything he had ever wanted. Her lips were soft and warm, moist and perfect, beneath his and when he wrapped his arms around her small body she fit against him like a missing piece. She gripped his back tightly, but kissed him with all the passion in the world. His hand found her breasts and gently squeezed and she made a small mewl of pleasure.

_“And there, in his arms, she became someone else. Someone more like herself.”_

Sora wasn’t sure how exactly they got back to the villa, but the next thing he knew was they were in his bedroom and he was helping her out of her layered dress. The coffee bean that had escaped into her cleavage fell and skittered across the floor when her dress fell. Then, she pulled down his pants with a desperation that wasn’t virginal and he was naked as well. Together, they fell into his bed and he began to worship her body.

He was above her, nestled between her thighs. His mouth marked a path first with tongue and teeth. His kissed her lips and then down her throat, suckling and nibbling here and there until she cried out. His mouth found her nipple, licking and nipping at the pebble until it was a stiff peak. Then, his soft fingers stroked her throat and her collarbones, down the swell of her soft breasts, finally plucking her hardened nipples. His mouth continued its path, kissing across her belly and into her bellybutton with open-mouthed kisses. 

Then, he smelled her sex, musky and sweet, and her hands threaded in his hair. She made another sound as he stroked her first with one finger and then added his mouth to the mix. He licked and sucked her swollen clit, delved between her moist folds, pushed his tongue deep into the soft fleshy cavern, and then added one finger into her tight wet heat. She made that sound again, clutching his shoulders tightly. He nipped her clit lightly, tenderly, with his teeth and then sucked it hard all while pumping into her with his fingers.   
Her first orgasm rocked her and she let out a sharp scream of pleasure, yanking on his thick chocolate tresses. Sora kissed back up her body and nibbled her neck while she panted for breath. Then, she pushed on him until he rolled over and allowed her to explore him in the same way. 

She kissed him, tasting herself, and then trailed quickly down his body, following the path of fine fair hair from his throat to his bellybutton and lower to his rock-hard length. Her breasts and nipples teased him, brushing over his heated skin tantalizingly as she made her way down. He dug his fingers through her thick ruby-red hair, hoping to guide her along, but she went as slow as she wanted. Finally, her mouth was there and she was breathing her hot moist breath on him. 

He quivered as those delicate hands found his balls and toyed with them almost curiously. This only lasted a moment before she plunged him deep into her mouth. He groaned, guiding her pace and rhythm with his hands in her hair. She worked him to almost bursting before he desperately pushed her back onto the bed and made his way between her legs again. She was still wet and ready and her breasts heaved alluringly. Sora cupped them both in his hands and she closed her eyes, tipping her head back.

His fingers found her sex again and pushed in. She moaned desperately and then Sora sheathed himself inside of her. She made a small sound of pain and then dug her heels into his back, urging him to move. He was more than happy to oblige her and thrust in as deeply as he could. She pushed off the mattress until he was sitting upright and she was seated in his lap. From this position, she began to take over, riding him, and Sora let her.

Then, he lay her down again and had her his own way. She clutched at his with her long fingers, sucked him in with her mouth, devoured every inch of what he had to offer, and then, he felt her second orgasm rock through her body like a bullet and her clamping muscles brought him down over the edge. When they finished and he lay softening inside her, she turned her face away as if ashamed and wouldn’t even turn her gaze back so Sora could kiss her.

They lay like that a while and Sora let her alone. 

Then, he had her again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

By the time they had finished that fifth time, Kairi turned her face into his throat and kissed him with a strange sort of desperation that made him wonder exactly what skeleton she had left behind in America, but he did not ask. Instead, he kissed her delicately and deeply until she fell into an exhausted sleep beside him with both her arms tightly around his body. He cradled her and then joined her in sleep, still buried to the hilt deep inside her.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	4. "Cheap Melodrama"

Considering how AO3 presents each chapter, I suddenly feel a little redundant to repeat the chapter title within the chapter.

X X X

Chapter Four: “Cheap Melodrama” 

“I am telling you, Father,” Sora said cheerfully as he shuffled a few thick wads of colorful bills he had in the small safe in his office at the cloud-white villa. “I have never been happier.”

Leopold stared at his only son. “There’s no such thing as happily married. It’s an oxymoron like ‘happily dead,’” he explained. And surely Leopold would think that what with his wife’s and his own obsession with beauty rather than love or anything else on the green earth. It’s hard to be happy when you’re too busy beautifying. 

Lucky for Sora, Kairi was naturally beautiful—even when her crimson hair was wild from lovemaking or sleep, or when she wore his shirts, or especially when she walked naked to the window and looked out on the sunny or grey-rainy morning.

Sora took his suit coat from the Chloe as she passed and he saw her roll her eyes. She must had heard Leopold.

“I thought you would have been slowly finding your way back to the whores by now,” Leopold continued brashly. “Seeing some little ‘Creole’ time.”

“Not anymore,” Sora said.

“Anyway, you’ve had her to yourself long enough. When do we get to see her again?”

“We are going to the theatre next week. There’s an American touring company she wants to see,” Sora explained. “Why don’t you join us?”

…

And so, Leopold and Sora’s beautiful mother, Elizabeth, did.

The theatre was a great palace, even more beautiful than the church with a great tinkling crystal chandelier. There was a small orchestra seated before the stage for the musical renditions, the scenery and props were exquisite, and the costumes were fabulous. Sora was a little surprised, he admitted, and the plot of the play leaved quite a bit to be desired, but Kairi looked so happy that he merely watched her face rather than the play.

Elizabeth was not so happy to watch Sora’s bride’s awed face. Nor was she happy on those occasions her son leaned forward to kiss Kairi’s bared throat and shoulders or to whisper in her ear to that Kairi giggled and fanned herself.

Leopold, on the other hand, half in a drunken stupor, was also pleased with the play. “Wonderful!” he said to Elizabeth.

“Disgusting,” she snapped at him because the young American bride seemed busy giggling with Sora. “Cheap melodrama.”

Finally, the curtain fell on the first act. Leopold clapped enthusiastically and Elizabeth gave it a cursory little round of applause, happy there was only one act remaining now. Surprisingly, Kairi did not clap at all though her face remained glowing and happy. Elizabeth glowered over at the foreign bride and said firmly, “My dear, you look flushed.” Maybe Sora would take her home and they would not have to finish watching this disgusting play.

Sora leaned forward, his chin touching her bare shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “It’s only the theatre. I love it… even the cheap melodrama.” And she slid those glowing blue-violet eyes of hers to Elizabeth with an indiscernible look and Elizabeth realized that despite all appearances, the girl had been listening despite Sora’s attention. 

Elizabeth’s face flushed with embarrassment and she looked quickly away. 

Kairi turned back to Sora and asked, “Will you excuse me?”

“Of course.” 

Both the gentlemen stood so the lady could leave and then Leopold leaned over and asked Sora, “Does she suffer from fevers?”

“She suffers from a little too much rouge,” Elizabeth said angrily. 

“Nonsense. A lady does not wear rouge,” Leopold said.

Elizabeth lifted her small golden binoculars to her eyes and peered about the theatre. “No, a lady does not. And a lady does not wander through a theatre alone either,” she said sternly and lowered them to her lap again.

“Excuse me,” Sora said quickly once he had spotted his bride and left.

“Perhaps you will find the second act more appealing,” Leopold said to his wife.

Elizabeth made an unladylike sound and folded her hands in her lap.

…

Sora made his way through the halls of the theatre in search of Kairi. No matter how she had intended her words to sound, his mother was right—Kairi shouldn’t be wandering the theatre alone. By now, Sora ad looked everywhere for her except backstage so he stuck his head behind the heavy curtain and slipped in. There was a load of hustle and bustle as costumes were changes, props and scenery were moved hither and thither, and the orchestra tunes their instruments. A troop of angels and devils shuffled by, the last angels singing merrily.

Then, Sora saw her.

Kairi was standing beside a backdrop of charred trees, veiled by thick ropes from the ceiling, and she was talking to Satan on his red costume with his black mask and horns still on. Then, a fluttering rig of false flames was pushed into his view. 

A man in a hat came up in front of him, saying, “Excuse me, sir, but the public is not allowed backstage.” And he pushily put his hand on Sora’s shoulder to guide him back.

Quickly, Sora pushed him away. “Do not put your hands on me, sir,” he said politely but angrily.

The man pushed him back again and Sora gave him a healthy shove.

“Sora!” Kairi called out. She was languidly pulling along a prop beside her hip and she looked beautiful and surreal among all the spun-sugar falsity of the stage. “You’ve come to my rescue, just like a play.”

“What are you doing here?” he asked as she came up to him. He reached out to cup her face, but she pushed him back against a fake stony castle, opening her mouth to devour him.

“Isn’t it exciting? Look at all the mysterious contraptions.” She put her hands on his neck, holding his head so she could kiss him.

Sora pulled away. “Who was that man?”

“What man? I as lost, that’s all,” Kairi assured him and kissed the corner of his mouth.

Sora pulled away again. “You made my heart stop,” he breathed.

She hummed love in her throat, took his hand, and put it over her breast. “Feel my heart. Feel how fast it’s beating?” She kissed him again and then embraced him tightly.

Sora held her close and looked over her back at the slew of scenery and actors. Suddenly, he wasn’t sure he liked this play anymore. He wanted to leave—right now! But Kairi was more than comfortable. She ran her hands down his chest and cupped his genitals through his trousers.

“Christ,” he breathed. “You’ll be the death of me.”

“I hope so,” was all she said and gave him a little squeeze. 

Then, she brought her fingers to her mouth again and the man with the hat called for everyone to take their places for act two. Kairi paid no mind to anything, only kissed Sora again like she wanted to have him right here in the backstage of the theatre. And she must have because regardless of the play only being in act two, she got onto her toes and put her mouth against the shell of his ear. Then, in her most seductive voice, she said, “Take me home now.”

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	5. Haunted by the Past

X X X

Chapter Five: Haunted by the Past 

Sora was busy at work in his office when Chloe brought in the mail and handed him a nice stack to go through. He had half a mind to shout after her, “More work for me, eh? Aren’t I working hard enough?” but Chloe was working pretty hard too so he kept his mouth shut. (You never piss off the person who works in your kitchen. You never know what you might get in your meal and Chloe could catch a fly without killing it.) Instead, he shuffled through the mail and came across a letter from America for Kairi. The beginning of it read:

_My own dearest sister,_

_I cannot understand why you must treat me this way. It has been many weeks now since you left and in all that time there has been no word of your safe arrival, whether you have met Mr. Skye, whether the marriage has taken place or not. What am I to think?_

_I have already contacted the embassy in Havana and the authorities there in Santiago…_

And Sora did not read anymore than that. Kairi read the letter with her face set in a grim unhappy line and looked prepared to crumple the paper filled with fine cursive handwriting and throw it into the courtyard below. Like this, she looked less beautiful, but Sora still lingered at her elbow, waiting patiently over her shoulder while she stewed in her own thoughts.

“I know how you feel about her,” Sora said finally. “But, umm, you have to write. You have to before she has the police on us.”

“You’re right,” Kairi said and tucked some red hair behind her ear. “I have been unkind to her. Although she has never been kind to me.”

“Just do it,” Sora said. He knew what it was like to have to be nice to people he didn’t like. He was a businessman after all. “Do it. Then it’s done.”

Slowly, she nodded.

…

Sora was sleeping peacefully when the screaming split the night.

“No! No! No!” Kairi screamed in their bed beside him, still tangled deep in her sleep. “No,” she almost sobbed, tears leaking from her lids and down her face. Then, suddenly, she let out a banshee shriek and sat straight up in the bed. Her hands were raised, curled into fists, to ward off an unseen enemy. “No, no, no!” And she almost struck out at Sora before she recognized his glowing blue eyes and soft chocolate tresses in the darkness.

“It’s me. It’s me. It’s Sora,” he said and gently clasped her shoulders in his hands.

Her eyes were wild, staring at him with what could have been fearful suspicion. Her hands were in front of her face, warding him off like a shield. She was clearly terrified, dreaming of the skeleton she had left behind in America, he supposed.

“You were dreaming,” he said gently.

She pressed her fingers to her soft mouth and then to her entire face, hiding her expression. She felt the wetness there and looked startled, fresh tears blossoming in her beautiful violet-blue eyes. She shuddered in Sora’s arms like a frail fallen bird.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

Then, she looked around the candlelit bedroom, peering through Sora’s cloud-white canopy curtains that surrounded the bed. She didn’t seem to know where she was and the recognition did not come back into her eyes. Instead, she began to whimper and cry.

“That’s it,” Sora murmured and gently drew her into his arms so that she cried into his chest. 

She sobbed helplessly, clutching his shirt with one hand.

“You were just dreaming. It’s alright. It’s alright.” And he cradled her body against him and rocked her gently, stroking her back and shoulders. “It was just a dream.”

Still, she kept her mouth covered with her hand.

“A bad one, that’s all,” he whispered into her crimson hair.

Slowly, she sat back and looked up into his face. Now, she seemed to recognize him and her surrounding, but she pressed her fingers tightly to her lips still. Then, slowly, her mouth curved into a small nervous smile and she let out a nervous little laugh.

“It was just a dream,” he repeated. “Are you okay? Do you need something?”

“You.”

He held her tightly, her nightgown having slipped down over her shoulders. “You are here with me, secure, safe. You’re alright.”

Like a child, she looked into his eyes. “Will you stay?” she whispered.

“Of course.”

She lay down against the pillows again, hugging herself as if cold even though her body was burning hot. Her gown had slipped down beyond her shoulder now though she made no move to draw it back up as she usually did. Her nightmare must have really frightened her. Sora stroked her bared back, gently, gently, until he felt her breathing become deep and even again. Then, he noticed them. There were four thin slashes at the curve of her ribs at her side, small and thin and straight. What had caused them? 

He laid his warm soft hand over the old wounds and spooned against her back, but he found it hard to sleep that night. He lay awake, waiting, waiting for her scream to split the night again. It did not.

…

The next morning, he received the mail from Chloe and saw no word from Kairi’s sister. He was just about to leave for work when Kairi swept from the bedroom, calling for him not to leave yet. She wasn’t dress yet, still wearing her white nightgown and a soft white robe. She looked like a misplaced cloud, not out of place in Sora’s white villa.

“How is the queen of the house this morning?” Sora called.

If she remembered last night’s occurrence, she didn’t show it. She came into his arms when he rounded the corner, hugging him tightly. “See?” she said. “I’ve done it.” And she showed him one crisp letter in a nice crisp envelope.

“This is for the best,” he said and took the letter from her long fingers. “Thank you.”

“I’ll have Chloe post it this morning,” she said and plucked the letter from his fingers.

“No need. I can do it myself,” Sora said and took the letter back.

“I haven’t addressed it,” Kairi said.

“I can do that too,” Sora said with a smile. “I have the address at the office. Then, it’s even sooner on its way.”

“Yes,” she relented.

He took her small long-fingered hand and they walked down the stairs together. He hugged her to his side at the bottom as they walked through the courtyard to where the carriage and horses were waiting to take him to work.

“What will you do today?” he asked her.

“I am going to an English dressmaker in the Plaza Viejo,” Kairi told him.

“Oh,” he said. “Then, you will need some money.”

She smiled.

…

At the bank, Sora and Kairi were seated before the great oak desk. The man was large and round with a frightening grey mustache and his accent was a little hard for Kairi to understand, but he thankfully didn’t speak to her much. He spent most of his time talking to Sora in fast and loud Spanish. 

“Sign here, Señora,” he said to Kairi and then turned back to Sora. “IS this for both your business and personal accounts?”

“Yes, thank you,” he said and rose to stand behind Kairi. “I want my wife to have free use of all my accounts.”

“There you are,” the banker said and was about to turn to Sora again so Kairi broke quickly in.

“How do I sign? Should I use my Christian name?” she asked.

“No, your married name,” he said to her. “And then you must remember to repeat the signature exactly each time you draw a check.”

Her eyes widened but she stoutly said, “I will try.”

Sora smiled.

…

After work, Sora invited his business partner, Alan Jordan, over for a little boxing and some good cigars. He hadn’t really expected to get his ass beaten, but Alan got in a few good shots. Then, Sora started wailing on him, and Alan came out of left field and won. But—to be fair—Alan started cheating once he started losing and simply slung his slender friend over his broad shoulders. That was the only reason he won. After that, they sat together in Sora’s home office smoking cigars and talking.

“Well, Sora, is it love or is it just lust?” Alan asked.

“Is there a difference?” Sora asked.

“Of course,” Alan said with laugh. “To love is to give and then want to give more.”

“And lust? What is lust, Alan?”

“Lust is to take and then take more. To devour, to consume, no logic, no reason.”

There was a moment of silence between them.

“So, give or take? Which is it?”

“Both,” Sora said finally. “I want to give her everything and I want to take everything from her.”

“Oh, Sora,” Alan said patiently. “You are a lost man.”

“She’s the one who seems to be lost,” Sora said softly. “How, why, I don’t know, but that will change. I can change that.”

Alan lit his cigar in the flame of a nearby candle and blew a perfect ring of smoke.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	6. Awash in Mystery

Cha! Double update! I’m kind of in a hurry to post this because I have waaaaaay to many stories going at once and they need to decrease ASAP! Anyway…

X X X

Chapter Six: Awash in Mystery

Work at the coffee house was business as usual and Sora was just leaving for lunch when a man he did not recognize bumped into him coming down the stairs. Apparently though, his man knew him because he turned immediately and called out, “Mr. Skye?”

“Yes?” he asked, startled. Who was this person? And a strange-looking person at that.

The man was about Sora’s age, in his late twenties, with a fair slender though muscular build but he had a few inches on Sora’s small stature. He had a fantastic shade of grass-green eyes and shoulder-length hair the color of spun-sliver floss. Unlike Sora, he was wearing a cheap rumpled brown suit, a black and white polka-dotted tie, and a rounded black felt hat. All in all, he was incredibly strange.

“My name is Riku Downs. I didn’t meant to startle you.”

“That’s okay.”

“They told me that I would find you upstairs.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Small matter, hardly worth the time. I’ve been engaged by Miss Locke.”

“You mean Kairi?”

“No,” the man made a small sound. “Her sister, Xion, in Delaware. I’m a private investigator. I’ve just recently arrive from Wilmington.” Well, that would explain the rumpled suit. Riku shuffled about in his pockets for his credentials and showed them to Sora.

“I understand,” Sora said and gave the credentials a once-over. “I know Miss Locke was distressed, but we wrote to her several weeks ago and I’m sure once she receives the letter, she will be very relieved.”

“Then, Miss Kairi is all right?” Riku asked as if Sora was some crazed butcher. 

“Oh yes, more than alright and more than Miss Kairi now. She is my wife, Señora Kairi Skye.”

“So you are married?” the investigator said.

“Yes.”

“That is good news.”

“Happily married,” Sora said with a nod. So there, Leopold, he thought.

“Ah, what a mystery a happy marriage is,” Riku said and Sora almost rolled his eyes. “The bloom in the cheek, a spark in the eye.”

“it shows, I guess,” Sora said and took the reins of his white horse from a servant.

“Indeed,” Riku said and stroked the horse’s flank. “Miss Locke will be pleased to hear of it.”

“I would appreciate it if you would tell her that,” Sora said and stroked his horse’s nose. The horse mouthed his hand in search of food, maybe the scent of coffee that always lingered on Sora’s skin.

“I will indeed,” Riku said.

“Thank you.”

“And I will be all the more convincing in my report once I have met your wife,” he continued.

Sora eyed this strange fellow, but finally said, “Yes. Why not?” He mounted up on his great steed. “We will be home on Sunday afternoon. Do you want to come by for a coffee?”

“Yes, I will. And please convey to your wife how much I look forward to seeing her.”

“I will.”

“Good.”

Riku watched him closely and Sora even felt the investigator’s eyes on his back as he rode away. How strange these American people were! The country must be full of barbarian rapists and murderers, all kinds of skeletons in the closets and evil creatures that go bump in the night. He was suddenly very happy that he had rescued Kairi from such a placed. Here, in Cuba, it was much safer.

…

When Sora arrived home, there was all sorts of commotion in his usually quite villa and most of it was in his chambers. It seemed Kairi had bought a few large items that needed to be moved in. One of which being a large claw-footed bathtub that was being carried past when Sora walked in.

“Outside, please, on the terrace,” Kairi was directing. “Thank you.”

“Just do as she says,” he heard Chloe call also.

“What is—?” he began.

“Sora!” Kairi was standing on a large stool in her undergarments, holding a roll of fabric in her arms and being measured by two pale women. Chloe lingered behind her, looking on. When Kairi saw him, she jumped down in a flurry of cloth and white skirts. “Sora!” She kissed him quickly, very caught up in this commotion. “Just in time. What do you think? This one is for Sunday paseo,” she gestured to what he thought was her undergarments, “and this,” she displayed the roll of fabric over her arm, “is for weekdays.”

“Fine, fine,” he said.

Kairi swept the cloth aside as three children darted between them. She was smiling happily and he had never seen her quite this way, not even when they were making love.

“And the rest?” he asked, gesturing to the heap of fabric on the bed.

She darted over, plucking a summery yellow pattern from the mess. “This one I really like,” she began and then she stopped, looking up at him. “What do you mean? There are seven days in a week.”

“Well, what about your trunk? Is there nothing in there?”

“No, nothing good. Anyway, I’ve lost the key,” she said and darted from the bed to bar his path to the trunk. She sat down on it, looking up at him cheekily and grinning.

“Well, we can get a locksmith. It’s an easy job. Actually—” he dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around her, burying his face into her thighs “—I’ll do it myself!”

She let out a peal of laughter and leaped up. “Come on. I want to show you something,” she said and led him away from the trunk. “Come.” 

And so, Kairi bustled Sora around their shared chambers, showing him her few purchases, the largest and most expensive being the plain tin tub that she insisted he would enjoy. And maybe he would, he had never taken a bath like that before. Then, she jumped back onto the stool and allowed them to finish taking her measurements. Then, as fast as she could, she said, “You’ll all have to leave now. I’m going to kiss my husband.”

Chloe gasped good-naturedly. “Oh, dios mio!”

“And then we’re going to take a bath,” Kairi said in a tone that suggested that would not be all they were doing.

Chloe hustled everyone out in record time and Sora blew her a kiss. “Thank you very much, Chloe. Gracias.” Then, he closed the bedroom’s heavy blue doors behind them all.

Kairi was still standing on the tall stool and she beckoned him over for a kiss. And kiss her he did. Then, he embraced her tightly, his face level with her breasts so he lifted her down after a moment of enjoying that. She continued to hold onto him, insisting to be taller, so he continued to hold her.

Then a weird burnt smell reached his nostrils.

“What do I smell?” he asked her.

“My perfume.”

“No, no,” he said and thought a moment. “A cigar,” he said finally.

“I tried one,” she confessed.

He set her back on her feet. “One of my cigars?” he repeated. Ladies sometimes smoked gold-tipped cigarettes, but never cigars.

“I wanted the taste of you in my mouth,” she purred.

He laughed a moment and then said, “You have no shame at all.”

“No,” she said plainly. “There is no shame in loving each other.”

“You love me?” he repeated, eyes widening. “Kairi?”

Her eyes darted. “Do you love me? Or are you not the loving kind?”

Sora had gone into this not expecting to fall in love or ever to come across it, but… as he stared into her eyes and she opened her mouth to devour him, he thought just maybe… maybe… But then Kairi had cupped him through his trousers and had placed one of his hands over her breasts and he didn’t have another moment to think about it.

They fell into the twisted sheets and she pulled him on top of her, string up into his face. She let out her little laugh and kissed him deeply while his hands went beneath her dress, pushed her panties aside, and found that she was already soaking wet for him. He smiled into her mouth and she unzipped his pants, pulling him out with her warm soft hands, and milked him tantalizingly slowly until he was panting against her throat. Then, he pushed her skirts up and found his way inside her without taking anything off. 

She gasped at he filled her, head tipping back and a moan escaping her. Sora devoured all the sounds she was making as he drove into her over and over. Then, every sound she made was his name and he reached down to where their bodies joined and gave her just what she needed to explode. Only then did he allow himself to follow her.

…

After that, as she had said, they slowly stripped each other and got into the hot bath. They languidly washed every inch of the other’s body nearly bringing themselves to another round of lovemaking, but Kairi told him that she didn’t want bathwater to get inside her. It was closer than they had ever been before, Sora thought, lying in the warm water naked like that. He ran his fingers down the smooth expanse of her arm and she touched the bend of his knee. 

In the bedroom, the bird twittered happily in its little bamboo cage.

“I forgot to tell you,” he said suddenly. “We have a visitor coming on Sunday.”

“Oh?” she murmured and nestled back against his bare chest. “We do?”

“Yes, a genuine private investigator coming all the way from Delaware,” Sora told her. 

“So, Xion sent him?” she asked and squeezed the warm water from the sponge in her hand.

Sora nodded. “Detective Downs.”

“Detective Downs, did you say?” she repeated and put her lips into the hollow of his throat.

“Don’t worry. He only needs to see that you are well and happy and truly my wife,” Sora explained and listened to the bird sing a moment. “Then,” he continued, “this nonsense will be over.”

“Oh!” Kairi cried out suddenly. “When will that damn bird stop its screaming?”

Sora snorted out a chuckle. “Kairi.”

She grinned and then laughed, too.

Sora reached over the edge of the tub for the pitcher of hot water, warned Kairi, and then poured the extra heat in so they could soak a little longer like this and let all the words about the detective and Kairi’s sister be washed away by the bath.

…

A while later, Chloe came in to check on the newlyweds, to make sure no one had drowned in the bath or anything ridiculous. She was humming to herself and went to feed the bird as she did every day. “Hello, mi cariño,” and she made a small kissing sound, but the little golden finch was dead in its cage. 

“Sora,” she called quietly as he passed, still wet from the bath, and reached into the cage to scoop up the little bird. “Look, he’s dead.”

Sora stared at the little bird in her palm. “He was just singing.”

“Well, he’s not singing now, is he?” she asked. “It looks like his little neck has been broken.”

“Take him away,” Sora said to Chloe. “I don’t want Kairi to see him.”

Chloe saw something in his face and eyed him closely, but finally nodded and left with the little dead bird.

Kairi was sitting at her vanity table, brushing her shining ruby tresses until they shone like glass. She was humming and singing to herself, but Sora couldn’t help but remember her outburst in the bath about the bird screaming. If she had killed the little bird, she showed no signs of guilt over it and that could sometimes be a very scary thing indeed.

…

_The woman was waiting in her cell with the priest they had brought for her. Outside, she watched as the soldiers outfitted in blue and red checked to be certain the device that would kill her—that would break her neck—was working properly._

_“How does one die on this instrument?” she asked the priest._

_“I believe that,” he wet his lips, “the turning of the wheel will break the neck of a person.”_

_“And if it doesn’t?” the woman asked. “Does the person then strangle?”_

_He leaned forward slightly. “Are you afraid?”_

_“No,” she said with conviction. “Kairi is not afraid, but Bonny is.”_

_“I don’t understand. Who is Bonny?” the priest asked her._

_She stared at him for a long moment and then turned back to the view outside her cell, tightening her grip on the cold iron bars with her thin fingers. “Who is Bonny?” she repeated to herself. “Hmm?”_

…

“I’m looking for Mr. Skye?” a woman’s voice rang through the coffee house early that morning. She sounded upset and it was still far too early to be sounding that upset. Sora lifted his head immediately and turned to see who could be so troubled.

“That is a question that Sora will soon be asking.”

Sora found himself staring down at a young woman in a rumpled black dress, carrying a twisted black cane, with her dark hair shoved up under a hat. She had bright blue eyes that were clouded with distress and rich copper skin. She let that voice out again, shouting almost in her urgency as she approached Sora at his desk.

“My name is Locke. Xion Locke. I am Kairi’s sister,” she said urgently and Sora immediately sat up to give her his full attention. Since she looked so shaken up, he quickly sat her down and offered her some coffee, but she declined and he remembered that she thought coffee was a sinful pleasure. That and she seemed rather ager to get right into whatever she had to say. “So you understand how upset I was to receive this letter,” she said and produced the letter Kairi had written to her some weeks ago.

“Upset?” Sora repeated and took the letter because she had thrust it out at him. “But I thought you would have been pleased to receive it.”

She snatched it back, big blue eyes filling though she choked the tears back. “This letter, sir,” she said firmly, “which was written in answer to the one I last sent her and which is signed in her name is not from Kairi.”

Sora let out a breath. “Of course it is. I mailed it myself.”

“This letter was not written by my sister!” Xion insisted.

“Miss Locke!” Sora shouted.

Immediately, she retreated like a turtle into her shell and began to put the letter away.

“I’m sorry,” Sora relented and came to sit directly before her. He touched her arm gently. “Don’t be upset, please. I swear to you—”

“Well swear as much as you like,” Xion interrupted sharply. She opened the letter and thrust it at him. “That is not Kairi’s handwriting. That is the handwriting of a stranger. A person unknown, at least to me.”

And so, Sora stared at the letter and realized that the handwriting within it did not match the handwriting of any of the letters he had received from Kairi either. He lifted his face and met Xion’s blue eyes with his own and she must have seen the realization in his eyes because her eyes filled with tears and she let out a sharp sob.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	7. Robbed of His Soul

Urg… all I have to do is post these chapters because the whole story is complete.

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Chapter Seven: Robbed of His Soul 

Sora raced home on his white horse at top speed. The horse’s flanks were pounding and sweat-streaked beneath him, its muzzle was foaming, and the poor beast was panting for breath, but Sora did not slow his pace. Sora wasn’t even really riding now, just desperately hanging on as the cloud-colored villa came into view before him like a sudden storm. He had to get home—now! Something was wrong, very wrong, with Kairi!

“Where is she?” he shouted.

Chloe was waiting in the courtyard, her face pale beneath her caramel-tan. “I was going to send for you!”

“Where is she?” he demanded.

Chloe was at his heels all the way to his bedroom, but there he shouted at her to get away and slammed in through the blue doors. Inside, he tore open Kairi’s empty closet, looked through a few empty hat boxes, but empty—everything was empty! In the bottom of one box though, he did find a small ornate knife and the blade had been broken off, but if she had hurt herself before leaving him, she had left no sign. Sora exploded out of his room and ushered Chloe into the ruin of his marriage chambers.

“Where did she go, Chloe?” he demanded.

“I don’t know. She sent me to the post office and when I came back, she was gone!”

Sora rushed to her vanity, hating the glimpse he caught of his wild reflection in the silver mirror, and opened her jewelry box, but that too had been emptied save one precious item—her wedding ring. She had left it behind. 

He dashed to his dresser and pulled his revolver from its hiding place. Chloe watched closely, a little afraid for his life, but he only crossed the room to her trunk and shot the lock off. Of all the things she would have taken, he would have thought her trunk would have been the first, so why…? Why had she left it behind? 

He lifted the lid and peered inside, but the things he found were not the same as Kairi’s tastes of the things she had purchased. There were black gowns and rich yellowed lace, much like the things Xion had been wearing today. Then, he found her bible and rosary, untouched, and a good Christian woman would not have left those things untouched. On top were two photographs of the handsome woman Sora also had a picture of and the name Kairi Locke was written beneath the old portraits.

It seemed that Kairi had been telling a great deal more lies than he originally thought.

Growling, he staggered to his feet. “She’s not coming back, is she, Chloe?”

“She never was here,” was all Chloe said, more of her wisdom fresh from its bucket to right over his head.

Gasping, Sora sat down on the trunk and tried to catch his breath.

“You’ve been married to a dream,” Chloe continued. “A dream that stole your soul.”

Another thought suddenly occurred to Sora and he raced from the bedroom, leaving Chloe in his dust in his haste to reach the bank. When he arrived there, it was as he had feared. The man behind the desk was not his mustached friend, but a small hateful man who had had it in for Sora and his family for as long as anyone could remember. It was an unfortunate pairing of events and the little man’s black eyes were gleaming behind his glasses.

“Your wife arrived at five minutes to three for a last-minute withdrawal. As you had instructed, I gave her full access to your accounts. Your balance at closing time was fifty-one American dollars and forty cents in one account and ten dollars in the other.” And he actually had the balls to smile at Sora as he said this.

Sora lunged around the desk and grabbed the skinny man by the lapels of his expensive suit coat, shaking his angrily.

“As I explained to your wife to close both out completely your own signature would have been necessary,” the little man forced out, trying to push Sora off him.

Suddenly, Sora stopped at the words penetrated his skull. It seemed this was all his fault, not even the mean little banker’s. everything Kairi had done, she had only been able to do because he had given her that capability. This was all his own fault.

…

It seemed to rain in Cuba a lot after that and Chloe was once again the only woman in his life. As she approached the door with a stack of clean towels, one of the male servants shook his head at her and put his hand out as if to bar her path.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” he said.

Chloe waved him away. She knocked on the blue bedroom door several times, calling out Sora’s name, but he did not answer so she went in anyway. The room was as she had last seen it—bed unslept in, empty boxes all over the floor, empty glasses and bottles on the table, Kairi’s trunk thrown open, and Sora slumped in his favorite chair at the window. 

His face was moon-pale, dark circles under his lovely cerulean sky-blue eyes, his lips chapped, and his rich chocolate hair unkempt and lackluster. He hadn’t bathed since she had left, just sat in that chair at the window hour after hour, day after day. The pounds were melting off of his already rail-thin frame because he wouldn’t eat and barely slept. Sora was falling apart at the seams and all because of one woman’s lies. Chloe hoped that Kairi never came back because anyone who hurt sweet Sora like this deserved some of the cruelest forms of punishment on God’s green earth.

“Mi cariño,” Chloe said gently and put her hand to his cold face. “God must have been angry with you that day, he let you look in that woman’s face.”

Sora blue eyes lifted from that distant point and met Chloe’s dark eyes. Then, he leaned forward and embraced her tightly in his small strong arms. Chloe rubbed his back and stroked his hair for a while and then Sora choked out, “I want her back, Chloe. I want her back.”

“No, cariño. What for?” she asked an cupped his face in her hands. “Why do you want her back again?”

Sora sighed heavily and put a hand to the side of his face. Clenched in his white fingers was his black revolver. 

Chloe’s eyes widened and she reached out to take it from him, but he yanked away from her. His face was paler now when pressed against the cold black metal of that gun and it made Chloe’s blood run cold. So, she went downstairs and sent a message to Sora’s father, asking Leopold to get his son’s mind on another woman. 

So, like any good father, Leopold took Sora to a brothel.

…

Women lingered in the smoke-filled hallway, at the threshold of each door, like prisoners waiting to be taken to the executioner’s block. They each wore a thin and simple white dress of different styles, so thin that Sora could see their nipples pressing out in the chilly air. They eyes him as he walked through the dimly lit hall, looking them each over.   
Finally, he found a prostitute to his liking—a pretty girl with flame-red hair and dark eyes. He lifted her chin and she looked up at him almost defiantly. He nodded to her and she went into her little room, allowing him to pull the gauze-thin curtains closed behind them. By the time he had done this, she was already unfastening the bodice of her dress and stood naked before him. 

He pushed her back onto the bed and dominated her. He wanted to have her as hard and fast as he possibly could so he spread her legs as high and apart as he could, released the stone-hard length of himself, and slammed into her to the hilt. She made a sharp sound of pain, but he didn’t care. He continued to pound into her as hard and fast as he could, slamming her back into the metal frame of the bed so that she was desperately clinging to everything to stop his assault on her body.

“Stop it! Stop!” she was suddenly shouting and desperately shoving him off. It was the kind of power that only came with fear and he realized he must had really been rough for a prostitute, a woman who made her living selling herself, to be in pain. She scrambled away from him, clutching the sheet to her nudity. 

Sora flopped back on the bed, pressing his aching cock between his legs. It wasn’t the same anyway. She might have looked like Kairi, just a little, but it wasn’t the same. He needed Kairi. He needed to take her hard to vent his frustration and pain, and he wanted her to feel the force of his love deep inside her. So, he gave this girl some money and told her to get him some whiskey and cigars. She ran from the room as if grateful to escape him. 

Then, Sora lay on the bed and waited for what was to come to him. 

_“No, this is not a love story, but it is a story about love. About those who give into it and the price they pay. And those who run away from it because they are afraid or because they do not believe they are worthy of it. She ran away. He gave in.”_

Sora woke with his head lying on a hard wooden table. 

There was a glass of whiskey before him and the empty bottle had been overturned. The cigar in his hand had burned down to the end and was millimeters away from burning into the flesh on his fingers. Everything hurt—he was hung-over. His head was throbbing and even the dim light in the brothel hurt his eyes and went right into his skull.

“Mr. Skye?”

“Yes?” he said blearily.

“Riku Downs.” And the strange man in the rumpled suit sat down at the table across from Sora. “What a happy coincidence.”

Sora stared at him a moment and then rapped his knuckles on the table. “Oh yeah. I remember you.”

Riku watched him as if waiting for something.

Sora lifted his hand slowly and then told Riku everything. They had started drinking another bottle and it was nearly half-empty now. Though Sora had offered Riku a cigar, he was the only one smoking. The brothel was filled with the scents and sounds of sex, mildly drowned out by the scent and sound of the rain outside the open terrace.

“And the authorities here could do nothing?” Riku asked when Sora finally finished. 

Sora shook his head. “After all, there was no crime. She was my wife. She just took what I had given her,” he explained and took a long drink.

“Your money.”

Sora nodded.

“And your love.”

He nodded again.

“And you did not suspect?”

Sora barked a hollow laugh. “It seems I know a lot less about women then I thought I did.”

“And I know too much,” Riku agreed. “Consequently, I’ve not much use for them apart from the necessities.” His gaze flit to the open terrace where the red-headed prostitute Sora had bought was washing herself with a basin of rainwater and a sponge. She was unabashedly naked and so glimmeringly beautiful. “For real intercourse, I prefer the company of men,” he said.

Sora took a long drag on his cigar, letting that soak in. then, he said quickly, “Listen to me. Could you find her?” and he stared desperately at Riku with red-rimmed sky-blue eyes.

“Perhaps,” he said. “But I am, at the moment, engaged to find the real Kairi, the one you were meant to marry.” And he showed Sora a picture of the handsome woman he had originally been looking for that day at the docks.

“Have you found her?” Sora slurred. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Have you found her?”

“Not yet.”

“If you do, she might lead you to the Kairi I married.”

“Perhaps,” Riku said. “And vice versa.”

“As much as you want I will pay, if you can find her for me,” Sora said. “That’s all I want.”

“Then I assume you have made up your losses,” Riku murmured and traced his finger around the rim of his glass.

“As much as you want, I will pay, I said it,” Sora repeated. “I will pay.”

“Yes, I believe you would. And if I did find your Kairi, if I brought her to you or you to her, what good would it possibly do you now?” Riku asked and leaned forward to look into Sora’s exhausted face. “Money’s gone. The love ruined. What could you possibly want with her? What could you possibly want?”

Sora ran a pale hand through his thick dark chocolate hair and stubbed out his cigar with a vengeance. Then, he spent a long moment just staring at Riku. Finally, he said with absolute seriousness and conviction, “I want to kill her.”

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns?

Review! 

You have all been very bad reviewers for this story!


	8. Pursuit to Havana

Short chapter, but hey, blame the movie. Short chapter there, too.

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Chapter Eight: Pursuit to Havana

Riku Downs and Sora Skye boarded the liner that Kairi had come in on from America so long ago, in pursuit of two women who were so different yet went about under the same name. One, a lying beautiful temptress, having stolen that name. The other, a handsome woman from Delaware, the rightful owner. 

Kairi Locke. 

Then, in the fashion of all cops and detective, they started walking the beat to break in their new shoes. Sora had wedding photographs of his Kairi while Riku had photos of the Kairi from Delaware. They combined their means and then split up, each with two photographs to search the boat. 

“Yes, I do recall this lady,” the captain said when Sora asked him and showed the wedding photo of himself and Kairi. “Slim and dark and very… I remember her coming along the deck and the breeze catching her skirt. She was coming towards me. She quickly held it down with her hand and, as she passed, she smiled. I believe she was traveling with a troupe of American actors, touring the island.”

“Yes, I remember her,” the busboy said when Riku handed him the photograph of Xion’s sister, “because she rolled up some lettuce in her napkin. I thought it was strange, but then she explained that it was for her bird. She was traveling with a bird.”

“Oh yes! A lady with a birdcage,” one of the dark-skinned serving women said to the photograph of the handsome woman. “But this doesn’t look like her. She was young and very pretty.” So Sora showed her the wedding photograph of his Kairi. “Oh yes! That’s her.”

“The real Kairi never appears,” Riku said when they met up later, “because she is dead.”

“You…” Sora began. “You mean murdered…”

“Yes,” Riku said and leaned on the railing, looking out over the ocean with those grass-green eyes of his. Sora rubbed his eyes with his fingers and Riku gave him a small kindness. “Or she could have had an accomplice. These women often have an accomplice. Someone she might use and then discard. Someone who might even now be in pursuit of her, just like you and I are.” He turned his gaze back out over the sea. “And this is where it happened. Here, in Havana.”

Sora covered his mouth. He felt a little sick and it had nothing to do with the rocking of the boat on the sea.

…

Havana was a beautiful place, rich in culture and excitement. When they arrived, the lobby of the hotel had been turned into a fiesta. Dancers in grass skirts, masks, and other feathered, flowered, or beaded finery were dancing to the heady beat of a drum and a brass horn and some strange whimsical singing. Men wearing grass collars and striped pants performed small acrobatics, walking on their hands and such. There was even a bared-breasted woman in a plain-faced mask riding a white horse bareback. Even as Sora watched, a man leaped up behind her and grasped her breasts. From the open ceiling, a steady rain of white petals drifted down, tossed by spectacularly-dressed children from the balcony above, covering everything like a fresh blanket of snow.

“This way, gentlemen. Welcome to Havana. Mr. Downs will be in room thirty-seven and Mr. Skye will be just down the hall in room forty-two,” the cheerful young concierge said. 

“Thank you,” Sora said politely.

“I’ll see if I can hook myself up with the local authorities,” Riku was saying. “And see if any dead bodies have turned up recently. You’re welcome to join me.” He picked a piece of whiteness off Sora’s shoulder, brushing it way with his handkerchief.

“No,” Sora said after a moment. “Thank you.”

“Havana is a very accommodating city, especially during Carnival,” the concierge told Sora as he carried in the bags. “I suggest the Opera restaurant, sir, just across the street. It’s very popular with the American tourists.” Then, he handed Sora the room keys and left.

Riku was lounging on the neatly-made bed. “Why don’t you do something pleasant tonight?” he asked his companion while Sora shrugged from his suit coat. In the bottom of the open suitcase, Riku spied Sora’s revolver and fingered it. “Treat yourself to a good dinner, good cigar, and a good whore?”

The memory of the red-headed prostitute Sora had hurt with his rough sex flashed back through his mind and he said, “I prefer to be alone.”

“Alright,” Riku said and tucked the weapon into his jacket before Sora turned around and spotted him snooping. “So, I’ll leave you on your own then.” Riku met the waiting concierge in the hall and bustled off to his own room down the hall. 

Sora sighed and closed the door behind them.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	9. Face to Face Again

Decided to do a double update because that first chapter was so short.

X X X

Chapter Nine: Face to Face Again

A few moments later, Sora changed his mind and went out. The hallways downstairs were filled with the excitement of carnival—dancing men and women in masks and costumes, children in much of the same, laughter, music, good food and drink—happiness and he felt as if he had to room left for any of that. So, like any man devoid of desire for prostitutes or cigars or drink, he decided to fill the empty space inside himself with food. As was suggested to him, he went to the Opera Restaurant across the street.

“Here you are,” the headwaiter said. “Privacy and a view of the room. If your see anything or anyone who interest you, let me know and I’ll see what I can arrange.” Then, he handed Sora a menu and walked away before Sora could thank him.

And so, Sora ordered a hearty meal of Cornish game hen with some potatoes and onions and coffee to drink and sat alone at the finely-set table. Then, fate struck him down like a whip.

He heard her.

He heard her laughter.

And then he heard her voice.

“If I could have my coffee every morning before I dressed, I would be very happy. It would change the day.”

Sora slid to the end of the booth and peered around the side. Sure enough, there she was—his Kairi. Her ruby-red tresses were curled into thick waves down her back and over her shoulders. She was wearing a dress of black velvet and silk, trimmed with lace so that the swell of her breasts was disguised, and a feathered hat with an alluring black veil and a small white mask in the tradition with Carnival. In her hand, she carried a white fan instead of the birdcage, but she was just as mysterious and beautiful as the first time he had set eyes on her.

“Then that is what you shall have,” her gentleman caller said. “When we are married, you shall have everything you wish.”

“Hmm? Married? Your wife might have something to say about that,” she said and smiled.

“This was, Colonel, s’il vous plaît,” the headwaiter interrupted delicately and led them to a table just out of Sora’s easy sight.

“S’il vous plaît indeed, you silly mountebank. You’re about as French as my asshole!” the gentleman with Kairi said.

“Edwin, curb your tongue,” Kairi warned him.

Shocked, Sora could only stare helplessly after her and then desperately call over the headwaiter. 

“May I help you, sir?”

“I thought I saw an old friend of mine,” Sora said, thinking quickly. “Colonel…”

“Colonel Worth?”

“Yes.”

“Oh yes. This way.”

“No, no, no!” Sora said quickly. If Kairi saw him now, she would bolt. “I wouldn’t bother him now, but is he staying at the hotel?”

“No, he’s at home in Havana. He lives at Avenida Medios. I believe his fiancée is at the hotel though.”

“His fiancée?”

“Yes, Miss Castle.”

So Kairi was going to marry again. Did she do this for her living? Make men fall in love with her and then take from the everything they had? “Yes, yes,” Sora said softly to the waiter. “I see, thank you.”

“Certainly, monsieur.”

…

Sora tore back from to his room at the hotel at top speed, ripping through the costumed Carnival goers and charging past the startled young concierge who called out to him. In his room, he rifled through his suitcase, desperately searching for his revolver. For a moment, he couldn’t find it. It was not where he had left it. Then, he found it only hidden beneath a linen handkerchief. He clicked open the chamber and fond it still loaded. Then, he slammed it closed.

…

“My dear, I don’t have that kind of money,” the colonel told Kairi lightly as they climbed the stairs to her room at the hotel.

“But you do,” she said. “Your annual expenditures are two-hundred-thousand dollars, more or less.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because, under favorable conditions, you could realize at least one-point-five million pounds of sugar worth in good seasons five cents a pound—”

“No, no, no! Don’t make me talk about business now,” the colonel interrupted.

She unlocked her door and they lingered it he threshold. She put her back against the door and he stood in front of her. 

“I’ve been waiting for this all night,” he said to her and dipped his head to kiss her bared throat and the exposed tops of her breasts.

Ugh, this old horn-dog, did men think of nothing else? She swept into her room, away from his arms, and put her foot up on the trunk at the foot of her bed. “Now,” she said and slipped a wad of money she had lifted from his pockets beneath her garter. “Don’t watch.”

“Be kind, my dove,” he pleaded. “Be kind to an old man.”

“I am kind. Kind as I have ever been.”

He watched her put the money away but didn’t say a word about it. Instead, he came to stand behind her and touched her face as if memorizing it. She leaned forward to grip the bed frame, letting him run his hands all over her back and buttocks and her flattened stomach and pushing her ass against the hardness of his crotch.

“Will you undo my dress please?” she asked after a moment.

“Oh, yes. Let me have that pleasure.”

He pulled the ribbon from its lacings faster than she had expected and tore the black fabric open to expose her white under garment like he was a child opening a present on Christmas morning. She pulled quickly away, putting her open back against the wall.

“That’s enough. Thank you,” she said quickly. “Thank you for a wonderful evening. Goodnight.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll behave. I’ll only sit and watch you. You see,” he sat at the trunk at the foot of her bed. “I sit and I watch.”

She pulled off the sleeves from her dress and draped them over his shoulder. “Is that what you want?”

“Yes.” He pressed the still-warm garment to his face.

“You are very tiresome and I am very tired,” she said and put her finger to his lips. 

He tried to nip at her. 

“Goodnight,” she said again.

“No.”

“Yes. Goodnight.”

“No,” he whined.

She took his cane and slung it over her shoulders, leading him to the door.

“Can’t I stay? Please, let me stay,” he begged.

She shoved him out the door and closed the door in his face. Then, she put her fingers to her mouth and pulled off her black satin gloves.

“Daring dove, I’m weeping,” the colonel cried on the other side of the closed door. He sounded piteous, like a puppy tossed out in the cold. “My heart is pudding.” She showed no signs of answering or letting him back in so he said finally, “I’ll go, but my pudding is all broken.”

She grinned at that. Men could be so stupid.

“Goodnight, my little dove.”

She listened to his footsteps and the tap of his cane until he was down the stairs. Then, she tossed her gloves with her sleeves and said theatrically, “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” The colonel was not a man whose company she would ever miss, unlike…

Kairi stripped of her black gown, tossing it into her closet, and placed the pretty jeweled mask on her vanity dresser. Then, dressed in only her white nightgown, she pulled a thin cigar from the bottom of her trunk. This she lit, puffing over a candle. It was one of Sora’s cigars, one she had stole along with his money and heart when she left him. She found that she still liked the taste of him in her mouth and that troubled her. Men were cattle to be used and discarded so why… why did Sora’s pale face and bright blue eyes still haunt her dreams?

She puffed on the cigar idly, humming her herself all the while, and dipped her metal quill-pen into the pot of India ink. Then, on the Hotel Inglaterra’s creamy white paper, she began another letter—Dear Billy—a slender white hand slid down over her shoulder and she dropped the pen with a clatter. Ink splattered across the white page.

“It’s only me, Kairi,” Sora whispered against the shell of her ear.

A shiver went down her spine. This wasn’t supposed to happen! He wasn’t supposed to catch up with her, to find her—no one was!

She flicked her indigo eyes to the vanity mirror, taking in the sight of their reflections there. Sora’s cerulean sky-blue eyes were haunted, dark circles beneath those eyes, his pale face drawn and gaunt, his rich chocolate locks lackluster and framing his face in wild spikes, and even his mouth was slightly chapped. He looked thin in his expensive fitted suit, shoulders like the stabbing skulls of birds, and she saw the belt knotted up at his hips to keep the pants around his waist. It seemed he had lost weight since she left him. Her own face, she saw unhappily, was pale and shocked. Her own eyes were wide, still fringed and darkened by her Carnival costume makeup, and her painted-red mouth was twisted into an ugly little smirk that had flown over when she was writing her letter. At the corner of her mouth, some ash from his stolen cigar had left a bruise-like smudge. Her hair was more the color of old blood, dark and tumbling as if wet, and hypnotically murderous against the white of her nightgown. Even so, together in the mirror, they were a beautiful couple.

“You haven’t forgotten me, have you?” he whispered.

She flicked her eyes back to the letter, but there was no way he would be able to tell who she had been writing. Only the first letter of the name was inscribed.

Even so, he asked, “Who is Billy?”

She met his gaze in the mirror. “Just a fellow.”

“There must be quite a few fellows in your life,” he hissed, but it came out wounded and angry. “Billy… me… the colonel… Did you marry all of them?”

She realized then that this Sora was a dangerous man with nothing left to lose and here was the one who had taken everything from him. She set her expression in a hard mask, trying to smooth away the smirk at her mouth. “No, just you,” she said.

“Liar,” he breathed.

His hand slid back from her shoulder and he turned away. Suddenly, she was the only one reflected in the mirror and she found she didn’t like looking at herself. She didn’t like what she saw in the mirror anymore, didn’t like what she had become, was becoming…

“Liar,” he said again.

She lowered her eyes to the mess on the marble vanity table. The letter was ruined, ink splattered all over like a black stain. Her mask was something she wished to put back on again and Sora’s cigar lay burning on the stone tabletop. Along with the other frivolous feminine things a lady was required to carry with her—a brush and comb, perfume, hand-mirror, jewelry.

Sora’s lips brushed her cheek. “Liar.”

Then, at her side, he crouched down to be eye-level with her seated form and she turned to face him. Their eyes were like blue-glass stones, neither giving up anything that the other wanted to see. She had never once seen Sora’s expression so empty and he might have frightened her then.

“Well,” she said finally. “What is it then?”

“What is it?” he repeated.

“Yes,” she said. “What are your plans for me?”

“My plans?”

She made a soft sound in her throat, tilting her shoulders.

Sora stared at her hard for a moment and then lifted something before her face. She saw the shape reflected in the mirror—a cold black revolver, shining in the candlelight and reflected back at her. He said plainly, “I just came here to kill you.”

Some fear might have shown in her face, she thought, because she saw her reflection wild-eyed and felt the blood rush from her face, but luckily her brain and her mouth were disconnected from that fear. She gasped out a small bitter laugh and looked into Sora’s pale sleepless face. “My God,” she murmured as she looked at him.

He just stared at her, right into her eyes, and it was almost like seeing the sky for the last time. 

She could be content with that. “Well,” she murmured. “Alright, do it.”

He continued to watch her without moving, like a predator on the hunt.

She put her hand over the barrel of his revolver and directed it foolishly to her the swell of her left breast. 

A small gasp escaped his lungs and mouth.

“There’s my heart,” she said to him. “Go ahead, do it. Your money is gone. Do it.” She didn’t know why those words were coming out of her mouth. Did she want to die? At that time, she wasn’t certain.

“Gone,” he repeated and then angled his head. His eyes narrowed. “Like the woman you murdered.”

Her brow wrinkled and her grip on his gun tightened. “What?” she mumbled and then, “No.”

“You were with her on that boat! You were seen together!” he shouted. She saw then just how righteous Sora was. He felt pain for the murdered bride, for the woman he was supposed to have married, or maybe he felt that pain only for himself. If he had married the correct Kairi Locke, he wouldn’t be where he was now—penniless and with a gun to a woman’s breast.

“I wasn’t alone,” Kairi confessed because he was dangerous and knew more than she thought. There was no telling how much he knew.

“She told you all about me, didn’t she?” Sora demanded. 

His gun made a path down her breast and belly and goose bumps rose on her flesh, hardening her nipples. “No!” she shouted back. “I told him! And the next day, he came to me and said that she had met with an accident and that I was to take her place and so I did!”

Sora dug his fingers into the soft flesh of her arm and her yanked her cruelly to her feet, shaking her. “Another man?” he shouted. “An accomplice? Friend? Lover?”

She stared defiantly into his face and wet her lips to speak.

His blow came out of nowhere. It wasn’t hard enough to hurt her or even leave a mark, but it startled her. She reeled sideways, blood-colored hair falling across her shoulders and filling her vision Sora dug his fingers into her arm again and pulled her back to face him.

“An accomplice,” she said and put her tongue to the corner of her lip. There was no blood though she still felt the stinging of his hand on her cheek. “You saw us together, backstage, at the play. My friend, my accomplice, and yes—”

Sora let her go, turning his back to her.

“—yes, my lover,” she finished. “He was an actor, like myself. Actors playing parts. I told him that night.”

Sora began to pace.

“I told him that I didn’t want to go through with it. I couldn’t—” she broke off, gasping.

He grabbed her throat and shoved her backwards into the marble vanity. The ruin there jumped and skittered and she put her hand in wet ink on the sheet of letter paper still lying there. “Why not?” he demanded, shouted. “Why not?”

“Because!” she shouted back at him. “Because I was…” she squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out the sight of Sora’s beautiful face. “Damn it! Because I was falling in love with my own husband.”

He slapped her again, a little harder than before, but she had expected it this time. “Liar! Again!” he hissed in her face. He grabbed her around the shoulders and tore her away from the vanity. They stumbled on the carpet and it seemed for a moment that she would fall, but she got her feet back underneath her.

“I could have bought him off! I could have kept him away!” she shouted and there were tears in her voice. “But then—” she struck out, both hands hard on the flat of his chest, pushing him back “—you made me write to her sister and then it was all over!”

Sora’s face had gone white, but his anger wasn’t spent. He grabbed her by the back of her neck, fingers tangling in her blood-colored hair. “Whore!” he shouted and threw her onto her knees on the floor. “Thief!” He cocked the revolver and leveled it at the back of her head. “Liar!”

She remained there, subservient, with the sleeves of her white nightgown slipping down over her shoulders to expose all of her shoulders and neck. “It’s how I live!” she gasped out and it was not begging or justification, just a statement of fact. “It’s all I know!” She was crying now, sniffling. “I took the money and I gave it to him.” She sat up, turning her tear-stained face upwards. “No… and then, I ran.”

Sora pulled the gun away, staggering back from her. He made a desperate sound in his chest.

“What does it matter?” she asked and the tears were gone from her throat and voice. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and looked up at him. “What does it matter? It’s over.”

He leveled the gun at her face and then abruptly threw it aside. He grabbed her by her upper arms and shook her viciously. “Liar! Whore! Thief!” he screamed at her.

“Yes!” she screamed. “Yes!”

“Don’t you see,” he demanded, shaking her still, “that I cannot breathe without you? I cannot live without you! Don’t you see that? Don’t you see how much I love you?”

She slapped at him, screaming and shouting in nameless grief. She had screwed up.

Sora grabbed her and pulled her to him tightly, embracing her to hard that she could not get away even if she had wanted to. For only a moment, she struggled against him and then she collapsed in his arms, sobbing. He stroked her hair and she put her fingers to her mouth, pressing in the sounds she wanted to make. They clutched each other for a long time. Then, Sora pushed her away and cupped her face in his warm hands, but she hid behind her own fingers. Finally, he managed to get her to pull them down and touched her cheeks, her eyes, her nose, her lips. He stroked her bare shoulders and her bare back and the exposed tops of her breasts. Then, he pulled her tightly to him and she felt wetness on the side of her neck where his face was. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry,” she gasped out.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	10. "You Have Only Me"

More than halfway finished with this story.

X X X

Chapter Ten: “You Have Only Me”

Havana, Cuba, was a beautiful place in the morning. The sunlight glinted off the blue-glass sea and the boats were small enough to be a child’s toys. The bell of the chapel beside the hotel tolled the morning hours loudly, but the streets were quiet of the raucous Carnival that had gone on the night before. Everything was still and quiet and beautiful. It was all like a dream. All the bad things that had happened were like a dream, too.

“Where am I?” Sora asked, opening his blue eyes to see a beautiful angel’s face. Kairi was lying naked beside him in her bed, dusky nipples just peeking over the top of the sheet she had drawn against her chest, and her soft legs tangled with his beneath the sheets. He could feel the heat and wetness of her sex against his thigh. “Who are you?”

Then, the angel dipped down her head and kissed him gently.

“Really?” Sora asked her.

“My name is Bonny,” she said honestly, softly. “Bonny Castle.”

“Bonny,” he repeated.

She nodded and gently held his hand.

“Is that your Christian name?”

“It would be,” she murmured, “if I were Christian, but I’m not.”

He pressed his fingertip to her mouth and she kissed it.

“I was never baptized,” she continued. “I was a foundling. And so was Billy…”

Sora rolled over, putting his back to her.

“We were raised in an orphanage outside St. Louis,” she continued and rested her chin of his bare lightly-freckled shoulder. “He gave me my name. He saw it on a picture postcard from Scotland. It had a drawing on it of a ‘bonny castle,’ it said.” She smiled at the precious memory.

“When we were fourteen, we ran away together. Like brother, sister, father, daughter, husband, wife… he was my salvation.”

“No,” Sora said suddenly.

Her teeth snapped together with an audible click. “I don’t want to know. Not now… You are Kairi Locke from Wilmington, Delaware. You were born the day you stepped off that boat and became my wife.”

She felt like crying, but choked back the tears. “But then, I am not Kairi Locke at all, am I?” was all she said. “I’m simply your wife.”

Sora rolled over to face her, blue eyes shining. Suddenly, he reached for his discarded suit coat and she wondered if he would shoot her now, but he only pulled her discarded golden wedding band from the pocket and showed it to her. Kairi smiled faintly at him and then kissed his lips gently while he slid it delicately over her long thin finger. Then, he took her knuckle into his mouth and his tongue lavished attention on her finger and the band. Then, he kissed her mouth and his hand traced a shivering path down her back. He cupped her buttocks and then stroked her wet sex gently from behind and it was just like she always dreamed.

But it seemed the most reliable of alarm clocks for wonderful dreams was the sex-drive of men.

The colonel knocked on the door, calling to her, “It’s Edwin, my dear. Am I to early? Don’t hurry. Nothing gives me more pleasure than to wait for you outside your door. Unless, of course, you were to let me in.” He waited a moment, just in case she was going to allow him in, though he knew she wouldn’t. So, he stepped back a few feet and knelt down like the classic prince, bearing his great beautiful bouquet of flowers on his knee.

And it was just so that his face was perfectly level with Sora’s crotch when he opened the door, naked and aroused, with a broad smile. “Colonel Worth!” he exclaimed.

The colonel dragged his eyes up from the impressive shaft and blinked owlishly at Sora’s face before suddenly turning his face away. If he had been a younger man, he would have leaped backwards, but Colonel Worth was old and had a bad leg from the war. “Good God!” the colonel barked out.

“May I help you, sir?” Sora asked politely.

“You are not dressed!”

Sora looked down at himself. “Eh, no, I am not.” Then, he leaned down and whispered secretively to the colonel. “I am engaged at the moment in a private function. A function for which clothes are a hindrance, not a help.”

“A private function?” the colonel repeated, eyes wide. 

“Yes.”

“With Bonny?”

“Yes.”

“Good God, man!”

“But, I am being rude,” Sora said and stepped aside. “Please, come in.”

The colonel managed himself up from his kneeling position. All the better not to be at eye-level with Sora’s penis. “No, sir! Are you mad?”

“Mad? No,” Sora said. “I am only curious to know what exactly your business is at my wife’s door.”

The colonel looked genuinely confused. Sora supposed Kairi had fed him some story along with a new alias, Bonny Castle, so he took it easy on the old man. “Wife?” Edwin repeated. “Did you say, wife?”

From somewhere in the room, wrapped in a bed sheet, Kairi dashed up behind her husband and slung her white arm over his shoulder. In her hand, she held his revolver and kissed the back of his neck. “Edwin, be careful. He has a nasty temper.”

“I beg your pardon, sir. I do,” the colonel said, meeting Sora’s blue eyes. “I beg your pardon. I’m an old fool. I didn’t know. I am sorry.”

Sora lowered his gaze to the gun Kairi had brought him. She was there, manipulating them all, yet he loved her and the colonel loved her. It was destruction! So Sora lifted his eyes back to the old man’s face and could find nothing to say. Instead, he laid his hand over the revolver. 

“Good morning to you, sir,” the colonel said softly, respectfully. Then, to Kairi, he said, “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” she said and Sora felt her smiling.

“Good morning,” he whispered.

Then, the colonel limped away with his flowers and his pudding all broken.

Sora looked over his shoulder at Kairi’s beautiful face and her strange wide eyes. “You see? You have no past. It’s gone, finished, disappeared…”

She sighed heavily.

“You have only me, now,” Sora said and closed the bedroom doors.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns?

REVIEW! You have all been very bad reviewers!


	11. "Give Her Up!"

It’s official. There are more chapters posted than reviews for this story. How is it CATastrophe got so many reviews with one chapter and this one doesn’t? Very curious…

X X X

Chapter Eleven: “Give Her Up!”

With breakfast that morning, they indulged in the sinful pleasure of hot black coffee. Then, Sora went to his actual room to dress and shave and clean himself up. Then, a new man, he went downstairs to have breakfast with Detective Riku Downs.

“Good morning,” he said again, feeling like a broken record.

“Ah, there you are,” Riku said and set aside his paper. “You weren’t in your room.”

“I have some very interesting news,” Sora began.

“So do I,” Riku interrupted before Sora could speak and fluffed out his paper again. This, he passed to Sora over the table.

Sora read the title out-loud in Spanish and then looked up at Riku in alarm.

“Woman’s body found. Foul play suspected,” Riku translated. “How’s my Spanish?”

Sora gave a small tremulous nod and asked, “Kairi Locke?”

“Stabbed in the neck with a small knife and then thrown overboard,” Riku said with a nod and cut into his ham. “Probably the work of a man, but could have easily been the work of a woman. The blade of the knife was still in her throat.”

Sora’s mind flashed back to the knife he had found in the trash after Kairi had fled his villa, left him and took his money and his heart with him. That knife’s blade had been broken off and it was in Kairi’s possession. She was either incredibly stupid, which he knew she wasn’t, or she had…

“And so,” Riku said, chewing thoughtfully, “your wife is now officially a fugitive. Not only you and I pursuing her, but the police as well. Cheer up, man, this is good news.” Riku tilted his head and took a sip of coffee. “It won’t be long now before she’s caught.”

“She…” Sora began, watching Riku cut his food. “…didn’t do this.”

Riku stared at Sora, hard, and his green eyes seemed to cut through Sora’s flesh. “I believe,” he said finally,” that you still love her. Do you?”

Sora looked away.

“Of course,” Riku said. “How could you hate her so much if you did not still love her?”

That was bitingly close to his heart.

“Trust me, my friend, there is no such thing as love,” Riku said. “Only misguided feelings and emotions.”

…

Sora hustled Kairi down the hall and she was still explaining to him, voice echoing off the stone walls, “It was my knife. He used my knife.” She was quiet a moment as he gently took her hand. “It wasn’t me, I promise you,” she said suddenly.

Though her word should have meant nothing to him, he said, “I believe you.”

“No one else will. No one will believe that I’m innocent.”

He grabbed her arms again. “Listen to me. No one else matters, not to me!”

They boarded the train after that, separately, but met up in a car in the center. Night flashed by outside the windows and Kairi’s hands felt cold so she folded them tightly in her lap. Across from her, Sora was just watching with those sky-blue eyes of his.

“What are you thinking of?” she asked him.

“You.”

…

In Cardenas, known for its waters and the healing powers of the sun, Sora immediately set to work securing a house for his wife. To his own tastes, he rented another cloud-white villa with courtyards and gardens and fountains and white horses in the stables. It came furnished and in a good part of town. It didn’t have Chloe as his most trusted servant, but he had Kairi now and he could live without Chloe—without Chloe, but never without Kairi.

In the courtyard below his home, Sora set to work there as well. Since the trade in Cardenas was mostly Americans and tourists, selling rich coffee was out. Instead, he catered to the tourists and created a strange experience where they could lounge in chairs in the baking healing sun and were served water from the central fountain by nuns in their black habits. The business flourished and the best part was he could see Kairi on the terrace from his work and she came out sometimes in nothing but what God blessed her with, smiling down at him and going back inside quickly.

Everything here in Cardenas was wonderful, but Sora never should have underestimated the skill of a private detective from the United States, hired and being paid to find Kairi. Especially when Sora had been traveling with him and then just vanished from the hotel without a word of farewell or explanation.

“Skye,” Riku’s voice rang through the still morning. 

Sora looked up quickly and sure enough, there stood the detective in his rumpled suit, rounded black felt hat, and polka-dotted tie once again, looking just as strange as always with his silvery hair in the bright sunlight.

“What a happy accident,” Riku said cheerily.

“Yes, indeed,” Sora murmured politely. “What brings you to Cardenas?”

“No a rest-cure, I can assure you,” Riku said and looked at Sora’s strange little tourist- and nun-filled courtyard.

“No, of course not.”

“There were reports of a woman answering a certain description. She was seen boarding a train heading east. You haven’t seen or heard anything, have you?”

Sora glanced up at his villa, silently pleading Kairi not to choose now to come out onto the balcony to wave and smile at him. Riku would surely see her. All he said was, “I have lost my taste for women of that description.”

“Ah, glad to hear of it.”

Riku followed Sora’s gaze to the empty balcony.

Sora cleared his throat and shifted so that Riku would have to turn away from the villa to continue looking at him. “Listen, can I offer you a piñales?”

Riku stared at him, confused. Apparently, his Spanish wasn’t that good. “What’s that?”

“A drink.”

Kairi came out onto the balcony, dressed now and wrapped in a black lace shawl. Sora had moved Riku’s line of sight just in the nick of time. A few seconds later and he would have seen her and her banner of blood-red hair plain as day.

“There is a café down the street,” Sora continued. 

Riku thought a moment. “The sun is warm… Your face, for instant, is quite moist.” Then, he turned in the direction Sora had gestured and began walking. 

Sora glanced back at the lovely cloud-white villa and saw that Kairi’s face had twisted into an unhappy expression. She knew who he was talking to. She knew who had found her, come so close to finding her. Then, he turned away from his beautiful wife and followed after the determined American detective.

The interior of the café down the street was dark and cool and Sora instantly felt better knowing Riku wouldn’t be able to catch a glimpse of Kairi out the window. He let out a sigh of relief, passing it off as relief to get out of the heat, as he sat down across from the detective.

“The body was positively identified by her sister,” Riku was saying. “Very sad, but very accurate. Two moles high on the inner thigh, a gold crown on a back tooth, and on her hand a small round scar.”

“Very interesting,” Sora murmured and watched Riku take a great many things from his pockets—reading glasses, matches, rolling papers, and a tin of tobacco. “Will you excuse me? I have to use the convenience.” 

“By all means,” Riku said without looking up from the cigar he was rolling. “Do what you must.”

If he had turned to look out the window then, he would have seen Sora racing like a madman up the street back to his villa, back to Kairi.

As soon as he got home, Sora began throwing things helter-skelter into trunks, bags, and boxes. He grabbed his money accounts, which he had been keeping in cash for just such an occasion as this, all the mail, and the other important papers he had in the bureau drawers. Then, he grabbed out his revolver, checked to be sure it was loaded, and shoved it into the waistband of his trousers.

Downstairs, the door opened and closed.

“Kairi?” he called out and hurried to see where she was. “Come upstairs!”

But when he reached the open terrace that looked down into the front entryway, it was not his beautiful Kairi standing there. It was Detective Riku Downs, smoking idly. “Ah Sora,” he began and started up the stairs to where Sora was standing. “I am disappointed and, yet, full of admiration.”

Sora sucked in a breath, closed his eyes, and let it out slowly. He was caught. What could he do now?

“Where is she?” Riku asked him.

“Who?” Sora asked.

Riku gave him a look, green eyes flashing. 

“No,” Sora said. “She’s not here.”

“You called out her name.” Riku picked up a woman’s garters from the tea table, giving them a little wave.

“Riku, please, be smart and leave. Get out while you can.”

“She’s mine, Sora. Give her up before it’s too late.” Riku walked into their empty bedroom and threw the garters down on the bed. “You are aiding a criminal!” he shouted. “And are very close to becoming one yourself! Come to your senses, man.”

“You saw it yourself,” Sora said sharply. “She is not here. Now, please—” he thrust his finger in the direction of the door.

“Don’t lie to me, Mr. Skye,” Riku hissed and put his face very close to Sora’s. “I can smell her on you. Her perfume… stinking on your clothing. You just left her, didn’t you?”

Sora was breathing hard. “That’s it. Get out!”

Riku grabbed him by the throat then and Sora realized just how strong his hidden physique was beneath that rumpled suit. He couldn’t escape and it felt as if Riku was breaking his neck. “Did she throw her arms around you?” Riku hissed into Sora’s ear. “Embrace you like this? Did she rub her cheek against yours like this? Did she kiss you on the mouth? If I kiss you now, will I taste her on you?” And then, without warning, Riku mashed his lips to Sora’s.

Gunfire shattered the desperate silence and Sora gasped out a breathy scream. He pushed Riku back into the frame of the door, hard and panicked, gasping and choking for breath. Then he lifted his revolver, level with Riku’s face, and wiped at his mouth.

Riku had both hands clenched to his stomach. “You would do this for her?” he asked.

It was then that Kairi walked in, carrying a single shopping bag and wearing a beautiful white dress that looked like a rich white cake. “Hello?” she called out and then came around the corner. Sora shouted for her to wait, but she froze in her tracks at the sight laid out before her—her beautiful husband holding his revolver and the detective sliding to the floor.

“Speak of the devil and she appears!” Riku said and seeing Kairi must have given him some strength because he made a lunge towards her.

“No, no, no!” Sora shouted and put himself between them. Then, he fired off one shot, two, three.

Riku turned and ran for the bedroom, for some escape, and Sora shot him in the back. There, on the rug where Sora and Kairi had once made love, Riku fell down and did not get up again. Sora stood there in the threshold, panting, and e Kairi broke out of her trance.

“Oh my God. What have you done?” she asked and quickly walked towards the fallen body. She didn’t get too close though. After a few feet, she backed into the door and pressed her fingers to her mouth.

“It’s him. It’s the detective. He came here for you,” Sora told her, still quivering and aiming his gun at the dead man. Finally, Sora lowered his gun and approached the body.

“What are you doing?” Kairi demanded. “Don’t touch him. Don’t touch him!”

And Sora backed away.

Kairi took a deep breath to steady herself. “Did he come here alone?”

“Yes.”

“No one saw him come in?” she asked.

Sora stuttered a moment, eyes glued on the body. “I don’t know.” He took a breath too. “Christ, Kairi. I’ve killed a man.”

“You need to go now. Go to the train station,” she said evenly. “Secure two seats on the morning train east, no matter where.” She wiped her eye with her fingertip. “And I will contact the estate agent and tell him that we have changed our minds and there’s been an emergency.”

“Kairi.”

She took another deep breath and forced her eyes to Sora’s pale face. “Yes, what?”

“I’ve just killed a man.”

“And I just bought a hat.”

He looked at her sharply, confusion in his eyes.

She nodded. “But I don’t dwell on it. I don’t say over and over in my head, ‘I just bought a hat. I just bought a hat.’ It doesn’t matter. It’s done.” She glanced at the body and then back at him. “Help me.”

Sora dropped to his knees. “Oh god…”

So Kairi threw the rug over Riku’s body alone. Then, she grabbed Sora’s hands and pulled him to his feet. That was all he needed to get his head back on straight. Together, they emptied the large wooden trunk in the basement of its contents until there was enough space for the body and the rug.

“That should do it,” she said.

“I’ll bring him down,” Sora panted.

“No,” she said sharply. “You need to go to the station before the window closes.”

“Yes, I’ll hurry.”

She grasped his hand. It was like ice. “No, go slowly. Enjoy the walk and no one will notice you. Understand?”

“Yes.” 

He nodded like a child obeying a parent and she walked him to the door. Kairi didn’t watch him leave into the night so they could escape together again. Instead, she returned upstairs to their bedroom to have another look at Riku’s dead body.

X X X

Five chapters to go!

Questions, comments, concerns?


	12. Back From the Dead

This will be over by Chapter Sixteen

X X X

Chapter Twelve: Back From the Dead

Kairi walked slowly down the hall to their bedroom, out of place. She was a murderess in a white frothy cake-like gown. Even if she hadn’t pulled the trigger on Riku, it was her fault he was dead. Taking a deep breath, she knelt beside the folded-over rug. Then, she carefully turned it over to reveal the strewn body. Her eyes burned with tears and her throat was agonizingly tight. Then, with equal care, she rolled the body over and took a look into his face in death.

She pressed her fingers to her mouth and a sob escaped her. 

“Billy…”

She stared down at his face, calm and smooth in death. He had dyed his hair, it seemed, bright silver instead of his natural black. He must have really gotten into playing the part of Detective Riku Downs to abandon who he really was like that. But, then again, she had abandoned Bonny to play the part of Kairi Locke. Actors playing parts. 

“You finally got what you deserved…” 

And she leaned over to kiss his cheek. He had been her best friend for most of her life, after all, and she owed him that much. Even if he alternately made her life a living hell and made her life worth living.

Suddenly, sharply, he seized her wrist.

She let out a scream.

He laughed.

“Jesus!” she slapped at him, but her caught her other hand.

“Aren’t you glad to see me? Glad to see old Detective Downs again?”

She glared at him, eyes narrowing. “Should I be?”

He angled his head. “I got very good notices playing this part in Chicago. Or don’t you remember?”

“Let go of me, Billy,” she said softly and her eyes burned with the wetness of tears that she had shed for him.

He barked a harsh laugh. “You thought I was really dead! Didn’t you?”

Kairi tore her wrist away and punched him in the throat. Then, she bolted to her feet and he grabbed onto her dress like a monster but she tore away and raced down the hall. She threw what she could in the path between them—candlesticks and chairs—but it did nothing to stop him. By the time she reached the top of the stairs, he caught her with one strong arm around her narrow waist. She gasped, breath exploding from her lungs.

“Did you think there were real bullets in that gun? Did you think they were real the night he came to murder you?” Riku asked her.

She struggled against him, but he pinned her arms at her sides.

“I couldn’t risk his putting out your lights, not before I caught up with you,” he said into her ear.

“Let go of me, Billy.”

“Never.” 

She struggled.

“Not until you come back to the game.”

“What game?”

“The skin game, darling, the skin game.”

“There is no game,” she panted.

“Oh yes. I see it so clearly.”

“No. No,” she protested.

“Oh yes.”

Finally, she asked, “What do you see?”

Riku’s grip on her loosened and she turned to face him. “I see him running out of money. I see you arranging that. I see him doing the only thing he can do. I see him going to Santiago and I see him selling his share of the company. I see him coming back with money. I see us… I see us finishing what we started. You and me together. We’re going to make you a rich widow.” Riku leaned in to kiss her, but Kairi turned away.

This time, he let her go. 

She walked down a few stairs, leaning on the railing to catch her breath.

“He’s worth a hell of a lot more than we got out of him the first time, darling, and he’s such an easy mark, devoted as he is to you. Bound together at you are by various crimes and misdemeanors,” Riku said and grasped her hand.

“Let go of me, please.”

“Beg.” 

“Please, let go!”

“Beg.”

But she wasn’t really the begging type so she simply tried to wrest away, yanking him down the stairs. But Riku caught her around the waist on the landing and pulled her down into his lap.

“It tickles my dick when you beg,” he hissed against the shell of her ear.

She turned her head back as if to kiss him, but snarled, “He says he loves me.”

“No one loves you, Bonny. No one could,” he met her eyes, “except for me.”

She glared at him. “He does. I think he does.”

“Not enough to live the life of a fugitive.”

She tried to wrestle out of his grip.

“Back alleys, cheap hotels…”

“It won’t be like that.”

“How then? Happily ever after? A nice respectable couple living on Main Street? Sunday dinners, walks in the park with children? Christ, what has he done to you?” He grabbed a fistful of her white dress and ripped it. 

“Stop it,” she shoved his hand off her dress. 

“Who does he think you are?” He grabbed her dress by the handfuls and pulled it up around her thighs. Then, he slid his hand between her legs and stroked her through the thin cotton of her panties. “You’re a whore, Bonny,” he hissed. He nudged her panties aside and pushed one finger into her. “If a man puts his hands on you, you’re wet.”

She panted.

“True or not?” He put his fingers, wet with her juices, against her cheek and made her look at him. “You were born one and you’ll die one. Sooner rather than later if the police catch up with you.”

“You wouldn’t do that to me.”

“I was your first man, Bonny. Your very first,” he reminded her. “And I will be your last. One way or another…” He bit at her lip, trying to kiss her, but she pulled away. “There’s no future with him, darling. Face the truth. You can’t live his life and he certainly can’t live yours. Let him go,” he whispered.

“No.”

He shushed her. “Let him go.”

“No.” She shook her head.

He put his hand between her legs again, stroking her and fondling her, pumping his long fingers in and out of her wet sex. A breathy moan escaped her mouth and she closed her blue-violet eyes tightly. “Let him go…”

She didn’t say anything.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	13. A Very Bad Gamble

Loving a man is like a deck of cards. You need a heart to love him, a diamond to marry him, a club to bash his brains in, and a spade to bury the body.

X X X

Chapter Thirteen: A Very Bad Gamble

In the dark of night, Sora came home with two train tickets. There was a cat in the foyer, a pretty chocolate-colored tabby and he would have stopped to pet it any other time, but not tonight. There was too much weighing on his mind. Where was Kairi? What about Riku’s body? What now? What should he do?

“Kairi?” he called and found her in the kitchen. 

She was eating something right out of the pot and she smiled sheepishly. “I was so hungry.”

“What about him? We have to get rid of the body.”

“No, it’s done.”

He stared at her. “It’s done?” he repeated. 

She nodded.

“You mean you did it yourself?” He eyed the pot suspiciously. Had she boiled him and eaten him?

She put her napkin on the table. “I’ve also packed all our things, as well. I left one suit out on the bed for the train.” She lifted her haunting blue-violet eyes to him. “So, did you get the tickets?”

“The tickets? Yes.”

“Good.”

“We go tomorrow in the morning, back to Havana at seven o’clock.”

“What an adventure,” she said and poured herself a glass of brandy. “Come to bed. You must be exhausted. I know I am.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” he said and caught her by her arm in the doorway. “Have you no conscience at all? I mean,” he cut his blue eyes to the side, ashamed for asking.

“Yes, of course I do,” Kairi said with a smile. “You see, I just don’t let it get the best of me. It’s just something that happened. Something that had to be done. And when there’s something that has to be done, you do it, right?” She lifted her glass and grinned at him. “So, here’s to us. A short life, but an exciting one.” She drank the remaining brandy in her glass in one swallow and then hurled it at the wall where it shattered into a thousand pieces. “Goodnight,” she said and kissed Sora’s cheek.

…

_The cell was getting colder as the night dragged on. The darkness was seeping into the cell and even the brown-robed priest was beginning to seem bothered by it. The woman, though, felt impervious to the icy-cold, just as she felt impervious to the fires of hell. Maybe it was because she was not a Christian._

_“Listen to her talk. Listen to the words that come out of her mouth,” she murmured. Her voice did not sound like her own then._

_“You mean Bonny?” the priest asked._

_“Yes, Bonny.” She nodded._

_“Did you have no control over her?”_

_She shook her head slowly. “No one had control over her. No one did.” She paused, turning away. “No one, except for Billy, and he wanted the rest of the money.”_

_…_

_“They found a house in the poor section of town. Kairi said they would go unnoticed there and she was right. There were many things that would go unnoticed in that house. All she had to do was get Sora to Santiago and it would all be over.”_

“No, no. You don’t understand,” Sora said as he shrugged from his suit coat in the kitchen. The house was small and grimy, not cloud-white like he liked, not beautiful, and the kitchen was lit by a single lantern leaving great devouring leaping shadows in every corner. Sora did not like it, but not even the rats and spiders seemed to bother Kairi.

“We’ve run out?” she asked. She was wearing a black and white striped dress like a beautiful prisoner, as if to tease him with the thought of what would happen if they were caught, with her full breasts swelling over the top of the ruffled bodice.

“Yes,” he said. “Tomorrow, I’ll go to Santiago. I’ll take the first train in the morning.”

“What will you do there?”

“We need money, don’t we?”

She sighed. “Whatever you say.” And then, she walked from the kitchen into the darkness of the hall without a single light to guide her. Kairi was not bothered by the dark. What she was bothered by was the thought that her precious time with Sora, with her husband, was counting down. Once he got the money… it would all be over.

…

She was sobbing, screaming, crying out in her sleep. Then, she lashed out with her body, driving her fists into the bed and kicking out against the sheets as if they restrained her. Finally, with a howl, she lurched up in their bed. Her blood-colored hair was a halo around her head and her face was moon-white, bloodless. Sora was immediately sitting up beside her, his shoulders bare and narrow and light freckled, and putting his arms around her comfortingly. He stroked her hair and she kissed the inside of his thin wrist, tasting the pulse of life there.

“I don’t want you to go to Santiago,” she said suddenly, nearly shouting it.

His cerulean sky-blue eyes widened, catching the moonlight. “But, I have to go.”

“I don’t want you to go,” she said again. The pulse of life in his wrist, the warmth of his hand and body, was teasing her. She was going to snuff that life out and she didn’t want that to happen. She wanted Sora to live and she wanted to live with Sora.

“I have no choice,” he murmured and stroked her bare arm comfortingly.

She drilled her blue-violet eyes into his. “Yes, you do. You do have a choice,” she said firmly. 

Then, she vaulted out of the bed in her nudity, white flesh shining in the silver moonlight. She barely slid into a nightgown before flashing from the room like a ghost. Sora stared after her a moment, then also got out of bed. He pulled on his trousers and followed her into the kitchen where she was lighting the lantern in the darkness. The light flared and caught in her strange beautiful eyes. She smiled, all white teeth like she was going to devour him. Then, she explained to him the other choice he had.

…

She banged the flat of her hand on the table. The new deck of cards shone faintly in the lantern light. “Once again, Sora.”

He made an exhausted sound, but nodded.

“When my hand strays to my breast?”

“Hearts.”

“My left eardrop?”

“Diamonds.”

“My right eardrop?”

“Clubs.”

“My throat?”

“Spades.”

“Little finger on my left hand to my mouth?”

“One.”

“Little finger on my right hand to my mouth?”

“Ten.”

“And when I do this—” she drew her finger across her throat, a dead slashing gesture “—it means they have nothing.”

“Right,” he said.

She made a quick sign across her face as if only brushing hair out of her eyes. 

“King, queen, jack,” he said.

“Right.”

She grinned and sat down at the table across from him. Reaching across, she grasped both his hands in her own. “Yes, you’re a natural.”

“Listen to me—”

“This is the way,” she interrupted. “This is the only way. This is our way. This is you and me, together,” she met his beautiful eyes, dancing in the lantern light, “please.”

He smiled faintly and didn’t protest anymore, giving her hands a small squeeze, but it was slightly disconcerting to think that Sora and Kairi together was cheating at cards to win money. What did he think of that? But he loved her, God in Heaven, did he love her. So he wouldn’t think about it anymore.

“Now,” she said and gestured across herself so quickly that he had trouble following. “Tell me what I’m holding.”

…

Sora had arranged a round poker table in his shitty little house in the poor district. Kairi wandered the around the table in a fine black dress, playing the beautiful lady waiting on the gentlemen playing cards. Sora flashed his eyes to her, watching for her signs as she told him what each of his poker buddies had in their hands. It wasn’t a perfect method of cheating, but it was very clever indeed. How would anyone ever find out?

Kairi leaned down, her red hair falling in waves and her breasts swelling over her bodice. “Would you like some more whiskey?” she asked with a smile. She could have licked the cards in his hand.

“He wins again,” the man to Sora’s left said and threw in his cards.

“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” Sora said good-naturedly. He took the deck, shuffled, and passed to the complaining man to cut.

The man to Sora’s right stood and asked Kairi, “Does the lady mind if I remove my coat?”

“No,” she said and poured more whiskey. “Do and say as you please. Try and forget that I am even here.”

He laughed and eyed her swelling breasts. “Easier said than done.”

So, Sora dealt round after round of cards and Kairi poured round after round of champagne and whiskey for the men. Sora won hand after hand, sometimes loosing or folding so it would seem that he was less lucky than he was. Even so, Sora had raked in nearly all the chips when the man directly across from him grabbed Kairi’s thin wrist with a slap when she reached to refill his glass. Then, he cut his sharp dark eyes to Sora.

“Will you ask the lady to retire, sir?” he asked with politeness but there was a clear threat beneath those words.

Sora had a moment of panic. He couldn’t win without Kairi, but he smothered it beneath calm confusion and the bland shuffling of the deck. “What do you mean?”

“Do you have to be told?” the man tightened his grip on Kairi’s wrist.

Sora knew then that for all their cleverness, they had been caught. Softly, he said, “Will you take your hand from my wife, please, sir?” and rose from the table. He put his hand to Kairi’s thin waist, prepared to spirit her away if the man would not let go.

But he said only, “Gladly,” and did indeed release her without further fuss. But, he did choose to fight with Sora. He stood up and said coldly, “If there’s one thing lower than a man who cheats at cards, it is a man who will use a woman to do his cheating for him.”

Kairi’s lips curved into a smile as she looked into Sora’s handsome face.

But when he whirled and began to fight them, she realized her great error. Sora was no warrior to begin with and they outnumbered him four to one. He put up a great struggle, throwing blows left and right, and would have won a one on one battle, but it was not that easy. Kairi grabbed the champagne bottle to try to help him, but one of the men grabbed her and pinned her to the wall. She could only watch, horrified, as they beat her beautiful husband to a pulp, dragged him outside, and she heard the breaking of his body as he fell down the stairs. The four went out onto the balcony to make certain that he wasn’t dead or dying and that comforted her a little, but then they came back into the room like beasts on the hunt.

“Well, my dear,” the first man said and circled her, grinning. “Let’s see what other tricks you might know.” Then, he slid his hands around her narrow waist.

Kairi shoved him away an threw a chair down between them, but there was no one to help her so she gave in gracefully. She sat down on the round table amid the cards, chips, and spilled drinks and lifted her chin in defiance, but she did not try to fight them. Almost expectantly, she stared them down until they began to disrobe and close the windows and doors. A little sliver of fear stabbed through her, but still, she remained there. This was, after all, her fault and she should repent for her crimes.

X X X

Aren’t we all proud of me? I did NOT write a DETAILED RAPE SCENE. Bravo! Bravo!

Questions, comments, concerns?


	14. Discovering a Rat

I am not posting any more chapters of this story until the number of reviews match the number of chapters posted. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for.

X X X

Chapter Fourteen: Discovering a Rat

_The device that would kill her was being tested again, this time with wooden sticks where her neck would be. The turning of the wheel and the crushing device broke the thick sticks clean in half. The blood left her head and she nearly fainted, but the priest who had been with her for what felt like an eternity now, quickly caught her in his arms. He steadied her against the cold stone wall, gently, gently, nothing like when those four men had taken her._

_“Are you alright?” he asked._

_“Yes,” she said._

_“Should I call someone?”_

_She looked into his face. He had a kind soft expression, just like her Sora, and something of that love must have shown in her face because she felt her eyes burning with tears. “You are so kind,” she murmured and smiled at him lightly. “You are so young and innocent and kind.”_

_He laughed a little and shook his head. “No, no one is innocent,” he said to her._

_She moved away from him, putting a pillar of stone between them. “You have a story as well,” she said with a hint of a sad smile. “Will you tell me if there’s time?”_

_“I have no story,” the priest said. “Not like yours.”_

_She leaned against the cold stone wall of the cell. “Well, it was Kairi’s story now and look what she had done. He could never live in her world and she would never fit into his.”_

…

Kairi climbed slowly and painfully down the stairs, clutching the railing in her sore hand. Beneath her lovely black dress, she no longer wore panties and she could feel the wrongness of what she had done seeping from her very core. At the bottom of the stairs, Sora lay beautiful and wrecked like a shattered porcelain doll. His face was stained with blood. Kairi sat down on the bottom step, aching for all this, and her eyes welled up with tears for Sora. She could not save him. Tomorrow, he would go to Santiago and get the money and then he would die. Kairi put her face into her knees and cried.

X X X

The next day, moments after Sora left, aching and beaten, for Santiago, Riku slunk out of the shadows of the poor district like a rat or a stray cat. He put out the cigarette he had been smoking because Sora had stopped smoking and would smell it if he smoked in the house. Kairi was waiting in the threshold of the doorway leading into the overgrown courtyard. Riku paused in front of her to smile and she smiled back. Then, he took her by the hand and led her into the dark recesses of the house.

Because he was that kind of man, Riku took Sora’s wife and his own old lover in their still-warm marriage bed. 

He took Kairi hard and fast, not even close to making love or even with the unbridled passion she and Sora shared. He bent her over on her hands and knees like a dog and pounded into her from behind as hard as he could for as long as he could. He didn’t care much for her pleasure anymore, only his own. Riku throbbed inside her as he emptied himself of everything and then slid out with a horrible wet sucking sound. Kairi was suddenly glad it never took much for him to cum.

And afterwards, he made Kairi lay on her stomach so that he could make another small cut on her back beneath the other four. He did this to her every time he slept with her. Kairi winced, biting the sheets as he carved into her. 

It always hurt.

Then, he put his fingers into her blood and put them in his mouth, sucking the blood hungrily. He brought his mouth to the wound and sucked there, too, until Kairi was shivering in agony. Then, he kissed a path up her body and put his tongue into her mouth so she could taste her own blood. 

He pushed his tongue deeply into her mouth and she felt his cold fingers on the back of her thigh. Knowing him, those had her blood on them too. He stroked her wet slit and then pushed his fingers into her, as hard and as cold as glass, stroking and milking her like an expert until her climax was inches away from her grasp. Then, he stopped and slammed himself inside her. She cried out as his weight crushed her small body into the mattress. 

She could hardly draw breath.

But he fucked her hard, pressing her head into the bed with one hand. Since she was already so close, she came for him. Then, Riku licked and bit at the scab that had formed over the wound until she felt hot bloom running down her back again. Then, he made her kneel again and licked hard and fast between her legs, driving his tongue as deeply into her as he could. Then, he fingered her again, sucking her clit, until she was begging.

It tickled his dick when she begged.

Only then did he take her as hard and as cruelly as he had before, but she had learned to love that again, just like she used to. She hardly thought about Sora’s gentle lovemaking or his warm soft fingers. She once again was Bonny and Kairi was just a dim memory, a part she had once played. She was Bonny and Billy was fucking her.

…

The office of the coffee house in Santiago looked as if it had been ransacked. That was why Alan Jordan, the Skye’s long-time business partner, came into the office with his gun drawn, but no one was there. The safe hung open, empty, and there were some papers blowing around on the wind that gusted in through the broken window. One sheet in particular caught his eye because it had been left in the bottom of the empty safe along with the key Sora always kept on his person. 

_“Dear Alan,_

_Congratulations. You have just purchased my share of the Skye-Jordan Coffee Export House. The price I have settled on it everything that was in the safe which I believe is very much in your favor. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t wait to discuss this with you. But as you may now know, I am a fugitive from justice. More than that, I cannot say.”_

And that was all the note said.

Even so, as friends are often capable of, Alan knew where Sora had gone and managed to catch up with him just moment before the train boarded and left for who-knows-where. He grabbed Sora’s shoulder and yanked him back, startled by the healing bruises and cuts on Sora’s beautiful pale face. Even his cerulean sky-colored eyes for which he had gotten his name were occluded with blood. Someone had beaten the young man within an inch of his life.

“What are you talking about?” Alan demanded.

“Murder,” Sora said quickly and flatly. “I have done murder.”

“No,” Alan whispered.

“Yes,” Sora said. “I did it for her. And the truth is that I would do it again.”

The train whistle sounded like a cry.

Sora patted his friend on the shoulder and said, “Good luck to you. Thank you for having once been my friend.”

They hugged a moment and then Alan nudged Sora towards the slowly moving train. Sora stepped on and looked back at his friend until he was long out of sight. Only then did Alan say what he was thinking, “God help you, Sora.”

…

Sora sat at the kitchen table with Kairi, unable to eat and watching her eat. His face ached and his heart ached—everything hurt him. When had that started? he wondered. When he had killed Riku Downs? When he had become a fugitive? When he had first laid eyes on Kairi? It could have been any one of those things.

She met his eyes across the lantern and set down her fork. Abruptly, she got up and took his untouched plate. He laid his soft fingers on her wrist, his beautiful blue eyes soft and wanting, but she wasn’t Kairi. She was Bonny and she wanted Billy, not Sora anymore.

“Will you light me a cigar?” she asked him even though he had stopped smoking. Billy smoked—she wanted the taste of Billy in her mouth.

He retracted his hand. “Yes.”

“I’ll make us some coffee,” she said and walked away.

He stood from the table and went to the cigar box he kept only for her. Suddenly, there was the sound of something shattering and Kairi’s voice rang out, swearing.

“What happened?” he asked and came into the kitchen.

“There was a rat,” she said flatly.

“A rat?”

“Yes, it ran right over my foot.”

Sora looked under the table.

“Do you see it?”

“No.” He got down on his hands and knees and looked around.

Kairi lifted her skirts and hurried from the room, grabbing her heavy cloak. 

Sora came out of the kitchen. “I didn’t see it,” he said.

“No?” she asked and finished buttoning the last button of her cloak.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m going to the pharmacist,” she said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“At this hour?” His voice was incredulous.

“Yes.”

“It’s nine o’clock. It’s closed,” he said and gestured to the clock on the wall.

“No. I know one that’s open until ten.”

“What are you doing? Wait!” Sora called.

“I won’t be long,” she said and breezed out the door before he could say another word. The door slammed shut hard behind her, sucked at by the cold night air. 

Kairi had always been a little strange in her manners and habits, smoking and breaking glasses and smiling at the strangest times and saying strange things, as if she knew something he didn’t. But this was even stranger so Sora decided to follow her. Sure enough, she did not head to the pharmacist, but to a sleazy hotel-brothel just down the street from their house. She walked as if she knew exactly where she was going, as if she had been there before. Ignoring the women that pawed and called out to him, Sora followed her up the stairs and around the corners of the dingy smoke-filled place.

“You can’t save him, darling, if that’s what you’re thinking,” a voice Sora knew all too well rang through a nearby room.

“Why not? Why can’t we just go?” That was Kairi’s voice and she sounded rather desperate. “I have two tickets for us on the train, tonight at midnight. We have the money. Leave him!”

“Oh, Bonny, it doesn’t suit you. This kind of compassion doesn’t suit you.”

Sora peeked around the threshold of the door and saw Riku Downs, the dead man, pull Kairi down into his lap on the soiled bed. He had a knife in his hand and Sora’s heart skipped several beats before jerking back into action at twice the pace. His mind raced. What was going on here?

“How could I trust you?” Riku was saying. “There’d always be someone else between us.”

“Why? Why hurt him?”

“He’s a part of you that must die.” Riku grabbed her wrist, bending it painfully so that her face twisted. “You need to kill it, or I promise you, it will kill you.” Suddenly, Riku threw her from his lap and to her feet, spinning her around to face him. 

Fear showed in Kairi’s face. “What are you doing? Billy!”

“I’m going back with you, to finish the job and be done with it.”

“You’ll have the police all over us,” Kairi said.

“Then do as you’re told,” Riku said and dropped to his knees to bury his face in Kairi’s thighs. 

She grinned.

“Do it now.”

Riku pulled himself to his feet and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her, and Kairi kissed him back. 

Sora staggered backwards and his back his the wall hard. Startled, he glanced up at it. Then, he turned and ran from the building without looking back. 

In Riku’s room, he plunged his tongue into Kairi’s mouth and she suddenly struggled against him. She managed to pry him off and ran from the room, but he caught her just outside on the balcony hallway. He pinned her against the wall.

“Say it,” he hissed.

“Billy—”

“Say you’re mine. You’re mine. Say it.”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“I’m yours,” she gasped.

His fingers dug into her chin and he opened her mouth. He spit into her open mouth, watching her run her tongue over her teeth afterwards, and then he kissed her again. 

Downstairs, Sora exploded through the front door and made his way home in the darkness. So this was it, huh? All his bad luck, Riku following him, everything. It was all because of Kairi. She wanted to kill him and take all his money. That was all she had ever wanted from him, yet… even knowing that… did he still love her?

X X X

I am not posting any more chapters of this story until the number of reviews match the number of chapters posted. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for.

Questions, comments, concerns?


	15. Poisoned Passion

Second to last chapter. 

Sorry to squawk at everyone about reviews, but I get frustrated when I have more chapters than reviews. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for at least one review per chapter, especially if over sixty-five people are reading each chapter.

X X X

Chapter Fifteen: Poisoned Passion

Kairi swept into the house about half an hour after that. She must have stayed to fuck Riku Downs or Billy or whoever he really was. Sora was waiting for her, sitting up in the dark. She went to the table and stuck a match to light the lantern—so she could see what she had brought to kill him, he assumed. He began to whistle the melody she used to play on the piano and she must have thought he would have gone to bed because she jolted with a gasp.

“You startled me,” she said.

“You took a long time…”

She turned to face him though he did not turn to look at her. “What are you doing in the dark?”

“Thinking.”

“What are you thinking?”

He thought a moment. How did he want to say this? “I was thinking that if I ever lost you, my life would be over,” he said finally. “There would be nothing left for me. Except to die…”

She made a sound in her throat. “Don’t say such things.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Sora asked suddenly.

“Yes, I did,” she said as she took off her cloak. “I had to go all the way across town.”

He felt her eyes on his back.

“I’m going to go change,” she said and paced quickly away.

In the kitchen, she made coffee in her nightgown while Sora sprinkled poison on the floor for the rat. He wondered if she would poison him. Then, he just wondered how she would kill him. No matter what death she chose for him, it would be less painful than living knowing that she wanted him dead and gone.

“Wash your hands and go to bed,” she said. “I’ll bring the coffee.”

Sora set down the poison on the counter beside her. Then, he washed his hands and left.

Kairi waited until she couldn’t hear his footsteps before she went to the door and unlocked it, easing it open a crack so Riku would be able to come in. Then, she took the tray of coffee and carried it upstairs to their bedroom. She set the cup down in front of Sora and watched as he lifted the spoon to stir the warm brew. The spoon was already wet and she knew he saw that. He didn’t put the spoon into his mouth as he usually would have. Instead, he tapped it dry on the rim of the cup and set it back down on the saucer. Then, he lifted the cup towards his mouth. Kairi sipped her own coffee, watching him over the rim of the glass.

“How do they die, you think?” Sora asked suddenly with the mug inches from his lips.

She stared at him, confused. “From the poison?” she asked. “I don’t know.”

“Does it take a long time?” he asked.

She wet her lips. “Well, I suppose it depends on how much you give them.”

“That’s right,” he murmured.

Kairi finished her coffee and stretched, watching Sora.

“Is it painful?” he asked her.

“I really don’t want to think about it,” she said and looked at his beaten face.

“No,” he said, “Of course not.” He set down the mug. “We don’t want our conscience to get the best of us, do we? It’s something that has to be done and when something has to be done, you do it, right?”

She angled her head. “Is your coffee too hot?”

“I saw him.”

Kairi’s beautiful face, fringed by all her blood-colored hair, did not change its expression. “Who?” she asked.

Sora smiled faintly and then lowered his eyes. “I followed you.”

“You saw who? Where?”

He barked a small laugh. “Kairi… shall we play the game or just speak the truth?” From his lap, he lifted his revolver.

“The truth is best,” she said because there was no hiding now. She was sure those were real bullets in his gun now.

“All right then,” Sora murmured and leaned his head on the hand holding the gun. The metal was cool against his bruised and beaten face. “Is he here?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Outside, waiting for when I turn the lights off.”

“When I am dead?”

She stared at him. “Yes.”

Sora stared at the mug of coffee for a moment. “I led him to you in Havana, didn’t I?” he asked suddenly.

“Yes.”

Sora looked confused, trying to puzzle this all out. “How did he know I wouldn’t kill you then?”

“He put blank cartridges in your gun.”

“Oh,” Sora said. His blue eyes wide. He hadn’t thought of that and it was so blindingly simple. He chuckled at his own stupidity. “Like a play,” he said. “All of it. Lies. From the moment I met you.”

She shook her head slightly. “No, not all of it.”

“Do you laugh at me, behind my back, the two of you? Do you laugh at me for how stupid I have been? How blind?”

Her chin tightened. “No.”

“Laugh now when I tell you this,” he paused, listening to the clock ticking in the background. “I loved you, Kairi.”

“Kairi is not here. Kairi is dead.”

He stared into her eyes, continuing, “Laugh when I tell you that I still love you.”

“No,” she said coldly. “You don’t love me. Not me.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, you,” he said and smiled faintly. Sora was so beautiful, his face bruised and his blue eyes red-rimmed and so heart-breakingly honest and his thick chocolate tresses framing his face. “Not Kairi Locke, not Bonny Castle…”

Kairi’s throat filled with stones and she fought to hold back the bay of tears in her eyes as Sora spoke. She knew he was telling her the truth now. She could hear it in his voice and see it in his eyes. He was no actor.

“You,” he murmured. “I love you as I know you because I know you.”

She shook her head.

“As you are.”

She shook her head.

“Good and bad.”

A single tear rolled down her cheek.

“Better and worse.”

She closed her strange eyes.

Sora’s small laugh made her open then again. “I told you this already, but you didn’t believe me. Tonight, you will.” He aimed the gun at her. “To us. A short life and an exciting one.”

“Don’t do this,” she said.

“No other one.”

She closed her eyes, but he was silent until she opened them to look at him again.

“No other love but you.”

She stared into his beautiful eyes, feeling a small happiness in her chest. Sora loved her.

“From first to last, start to finish,” he said.

Her blue-violet eyes filled with tears anew. He loved her and he knew everything that she had done to him. Still, he loved her.

“Don’t change, Kairi, don’t ever change.”

Then, he put down the revolver, grabbed his mug of coffee, gestured a small cheers to her, and drank it. “No!” She shouted and dove for her precious husband, knocking aside the lantern. It shattered on the floor and the lights went out. 

Outside, Riku put out his cigarette and began making his way into the house.

Kairi grabbed her cloak, slinging it over her shoulder in a hurry, while Sora was sick from the poison. He made a horrible sound as he started to die. Quickly, she heaved his arm over her shoulder and helped him walk towards the door. She had to get him out or Riku would kill him outright. She murmured to Sora as she hurried with him. His mouth foamed from the rat poison and she was suddenly horrified by the thought of even rats dying like this and here she had done it to sweet Sora. What had she been thinking?

Riku went through the empty house until he came across the ruin of the lamp and the spilled coffee, but Kairi and Sora were both gone. He ran back to the front door and saw that the gate he had closed hung ajar. His heart clenched. Kairi… she was betraying hi for this other man! Rage took him.

The train whistled mournfully.

Kairi had gotten herself into her cloak and Sora into his suit jacket and walked them both crisply along. Sora was getting heavier, his breathing more labored, and his mouth had stopped foaming. What did that mean? She helped him climb the steps and walked before him down the narrow aisle. His hands clutched at her back and she could hear him gasping in agony.

Riku went to the train station in search of her. He knew she had tickets.

Kairi helped Sora sit down and cupped his face. He was sweating and trembling and he needed a doctor, but if they stayed here then Riku would find then and kill them both. She whispered to him and would have kissed his lips, but if the poison took her, it was all over.

She glanced out the window and saw the shine of Riku’s silver hair. 

She slung Sora’s arm over her shoulder again and pulled him to his feet. He gazed into her face, confused and dazed. He was useless to her now. Hopefully, Riku would board the train and leave on it and they could make their escape by staying behind.

Riku jumped aboard, pushing people aside left and right. Then, on a whim, he looked out the window and saw Kairi’s banner of red hair. He jogged from the train, getting off just as it pulled away. A few moments later and he would have lost them.

Kairi heard the train pull away and let out a sigh of relief. Sora was too heavy on her shoulder now, his legs giving out. She cupped his hot face, stroking back his sweat-streaked hair. They had made it. They were alright!

Suddenly, cold hands grabbed Kairi and tore her away from Sora.

“No!” Sora shouted and lunged for Riku’s back, but he was dying. Riku kicked him in the gut and Sora fell. He didn’t look like he would be able to get back up on his own.

Riku pushed Kairi into the wall and pressed his knife to her throat. “You disappoint me, Bonny,” he hissed.

Sora pulled his revolver from his coat pocket where Kairi had shoved it and pointed it at Riku. 

Riku stepped back to give the dying man a target, but kept Kairi pinned with his knife at her throat. “What do you think?” he asked Sora. “Do you think those are real bullets in that gun?”

Kairi cried out.

Riku spread his arms. He knew those were blanks in that gun.

Sora pulled the trigger. The shot exploded from the chamber and knocked Riku on his ass in shock as the cold searing pain of the bullet tore through him. Hot blood blossomed on the front of his shirt like a red flower. Sora had loaded the gun with fresh bullets while he was waiting for Kairi to come home.

Riku began to choke up blood.

Sora collapsed on himself, whimpering in agony and trembling even worse.

Kairi flew to his side, taking the gun from his hands.

All around them, people ran screaming.

“Que pasa aqui?” a train conductor demanded, storming over to her.

“Do you speak English?” she demanded.

“Yes!”

“He needs a doctor,” she shouted. 

Sora let out a terrible sound.

“What about him?” the conductor asked and gestured to Riku as he tried to crawl to Kairi.

She turned to face him and he was such a pathetic sight now, dripping blood. She leaned down and gently kissed his bloody mouth. Then, she put Sora’s gun into his chest and squeezed the trigger. Riku dropped dead.

“He’s dead,” she said plainly, panting for breath. She pointed to Sora desperately. “He needs a doctor.”

“Alright. I am calling the police,” the conductor said and turned to flee this sight.

Sobbing, tasting Riku’s blood on her mouth, Kairi crawled to Sora’s side. She cradled him in her arms, his body was cold where it had always been warm to her, and stroked his hair back from his beautiful face, but his skin was grey and cold. “Stay, stay,” she begged him.

Sora gasped and shuddered. “I love you,” he forced out.

Kairi sobbed. “I love you! Do you hear me?”

“Say it. Say it again,” he begged.

“I love you. I love you! I love you, Sora.”

He screamed out, clutching his chest.

Kairi slammed her hand over his as if she could hold the life inside him. “No! No, no, no!” She shouted, her voice raspy with pain. “Don’t go! Please, stay,” she begged him and then dragged him to his feet. She was practically carrying him, but she was able to do that. “Don’t go!” But before she could even get him out of the station, Sora slid from her shoulder and lay still on the cobblestones.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	16. Answered Prayer

Last chapter!

X X X

Chapter Sixteen: Answered Prayer

The woman in the cell—Bonny Castle, Kairi Locke, Detective Riku Down’s lover, Sora’s wife and lover and killer, Billy’s lover and killer, American actress, orphan of St. Louis, foundling—stared through the bars at the device that was to take her life.

“And this is where the story ends, at least for me,” she told the priest. “Even though he is alive now, how could I get to him?” She clutched at the bars. “Do you believe in forgiveness?”

The priest looked at the fallen woman. “Yes.”

“And redemption for the human soul?”

He wet his lips, hesitating.

She turned away from the bars to look at him rather than the killing machine.

“Yes,” he said finally.

“Even for someone like me?”

He nodded. “Yes. I believe so.”

“Well, then, I will see him in Heaven, won’t I?” she asked and smiled.

The priest rubbed his hands together. What was this woman? “Yes,” he said to her.

She smiled, face beautiful and glowing even in the poor light of the cell. “Will you hand me my shawl please?”

“Yes, of course.” He stood from the cot and brought her the length of heavy white fabric.

“Now,” she said and hugged the shawl to her chest. “Pray with me?”

“Yes.”

Together, they knelt on the cold stone floor.

She drew the shawl around her shoulders and told him, “I wore this on my wedding day, but my heart was not in it then.”

The priest let out a breath.

She folded her hands and pressed them to her lips.

The priest began to pray in Spanish in a sweet quivering voice. Kairi opened her strange violet-blue eyes and looked at his innocent and kind young face. Even as she watched him speak, the priest began to cry—for her and for him and maybe even for Sora and Billy. 

…

Outside, dawn broke over the horizon and it was time for the woman in the cell to die. 

The soldiers that had been testing the device and their commanding officer paced hall to the cell. The stone floor was damp and the cold seeped into them immediately. Sometimes, it was hard working in a place like this, especially when it came time to kill a beautiful young woman. 

But it was something that had to be done and when something had to be done…

Inside, the woman robed in her white wedding shawl paced away from the window and then knelt to pray. She was alone, now. The priest had left already.

“I am sorry, ma’am,” the commander said. He hated to interrupt her praying. If she asked for another small moment, he would give it to her. He was not unkind. “It is time.”

But she did not speak, only remained kneeling there on the floor.

The commander knelt before her curiously and murmured, “If I may?” He lifted her shawl from her face.

Immediately, the priest began to pray in a loud voice, speaking Latin, and clasping his hands against his chest tightly, crying out in a ringing voice. He was shaking, almost as if he was having a seizure, and he cried out asking the Lord for forgiveness for what he had done.

“What the hell!” the commander shouted and yanked the priest to his feet by the woman’s white shawl.

“The priest? But he left an hour ago! I saw him!” the other officer shouted.

“Guards! Guards!”

But it was too late.

…

Morocco is a lovely place, full of white mist and white houses, white clouds and white horses, white-skinned girls and white clothing. It was the ideal place to live and now he had lived, Sora treated himself to all manner of whiteness so that his cerulean sky-blue eyes seemed to glow. Through the throng of white-dressed dancers and men in white suits, a woman with flame-red hair moved. She, too, was wearing white save a ruby and gold choker at her narrow swanlike throat.

“I must say,” one of the men playing poker said, “It is a pleasure to be in such lovely company for a change.”

“Oh, the pleasure is all mine,” the red-haired beauty said. “Thank you, gentlemen, for letting me attend.”

“And you, sir,” the man continued, “may I say, it is a lucky man to have found such a wife.”

Sora lifted his eyes to the woman’s strange purple-blue eyes and they smiled at each other as if sharing a secret. “Yes I am,” he said. “And perhaps, later on, I will tell you the story of how we came to be here. It is an… interesting tale. Some of it is even true. But, for now, all I can say is that from the moment I saw her, I loved her.”

Kairi smiled at him.

“And no matter the price, you cannot walk away from love,” he said.

Then, he dealt out the cards to the gentlemen playing poker with him and lifted his eyes to Kairi as she circled the table. Beautiful as she was and as he was with his eyes holding a new wounded depth, no one would ever suspect them of cheating. Not anymore… they had come together perfectly. Standing behind one of the men, Kairi drew her fingers across her throat. Nothing… nothing would ever come between the again—not prison cells or rat poison or actors playing parts. They would be together forever, until death did them part.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns?

And, drum roll please, we are finished!

Here we go. The classic very important author's note:

First, drop a review and let me know what you think! Are the characters way out of character? Does everybody hate Riku for being… well… justified in his anger and maybe a little creepy? Hate Kairi for being a whore and a liar and nearly killing Sora? Think I torture Sora way too much (but it's because he's so easy to be mean to, though I always make sure to give him a happy ending!)? Are permanently disgusted and can no longer even play Kingdom Hearts thanks to me? Loved it? Hated it? Are scared for life because of what Kairi did to everyone? Think there was way too much going on in this story? (Flames will be used to roast marshmallows and weenies!) Think I need to do more editing before I post chapters? Post to slow? Chapters are too short? Too long? Yada, yada, yada…

Second, I own nothing except my original characters: like Leopold, Elizabeth, and Chloe. **I do not own my plot, for once!** The plot was courtesy of the movie, Original Sin with Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas. (It’s a very good movie. I suggest watching it.) So there, now I can't be sued!

Third, there will be no sequel… at all, so don't ask!

Fourth, maybe if anyone has a YouTube account and would like to make a trailer with Kingdom Hearts clips to match the trailer for the movie Original Sin, I’ll link it here in my story. It’d be cool!

Fifth, check out my first ORIGINAL NOVEL! **The Breaking of Poisonwood by Paradise Avenger.** (Summary: People were dead. When Skye Davis bought me at a slave auction as a birthday present for his brother, I had no idea what my new life was going to be like, but I had never expected this. It all started when Venus de Luna was killed and I was to take her place, to become the new savior… Then, bad things happened and some people died. In the heart of the earth, we discovered the ancient being that Frank Davis had found and created and used to his advantage. The Poisonwood—)

Finally, thank you for making it this far! All the way to the end! Woot! Yay!

And so, I bid you adieu. Ciao! 

REVIEW!


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